Article September 15, 2003 Issue

The God of the living

By Lyle Young

My mother's mother was special. In the "Dirty Thirties," widowed and with a grade-four education, she put food on the table for her four children in small-town Saskatchewan by running the post office and a lunch counter. (The Canadian province Saskatchewan has mostly a farming economy and because of a decade-long drought was very poor and dusty in the 1930s.)

How did my grandmother survive that time? I now understand: through prayer. I remember her not praying with me or even teaching me how to pray, but praying herself—quietly and on bended knee—at her own bed every night. Her prayer, and her highest expression of it, her Christian living, left an indelible impression on me.

Though my grandmother passed on some 20 years ago, I often think of her sense of humor, her diligence, and her service to others. Considering the good qualities she expressed helps me feel at one with her.

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