Be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. (Deuteronomy 4:9, NIV 1984).
My Musings – Adrian (my grandson) is holding my latest book “A Grandpa’s Musings. A gift to him on his fourth birthday. Over 400 pages of devotions from Genesis to Revelation (he’ll hopefully red when he is older).
Following is my dedication to him.
To my grandson Adrian. A blessing who came to us in our old age.
Silver or gold I do not have [much to give], but what I have I give you. (Acts 3:6, NIV 1984).
I cannot promise that I will be around for all your life. But I can promise that I will love you for all my life. When I am no longer around may the musings in this book continue to be a blessing that will stay with you to your old age and be more precious to you than any silver of gold I could have given you. Because these musings come from the greatest of all stories ever told. The one that matters the most, because it tells how the end can be happy. How a new day will come.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.” (Sam Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings,” by J.R.R. Tolkien).
At first, you may be “too small to understand.” By the time you do understand I may no longer be around to say these things. But these are the things I would say. “Stories that [stay] with you, that [mean] something.” “The ones that really [matter].”
Love, Grandpa
