The Christmas season is the time for giving (or commercialism according to Charlie Brown), but it is also the season for illness. As the weather changes many of us fall ill (just ask Meg Knight!), but for our grandparents these illnesses can be life altering. Many of you know my Grandma, my mom’s mom, is terminal with cancer. She has lived long beyond the estimates of doctors, but the end is quickly approaching (This is not bad. As young people we fear death, but our hope is not in this life!). My grandpa, my dad’s dad, is also struggling with effects of strokes…

   Greg recently showed me one of his sermon manuscripts from 1991. He writes, “One economist is quoted in the news to say that nothing this bad has hit the country since the Great Depression, and that this recession could be worse.” And today the same rhetoric abounds. Just yesterday NPR had an half hour discussion comparing  the beginning of FDR’s presidency to Obama’s. Of course these are far from the best of times, but when FDR entered office the unemployment rater was four times what is today…

   As a culture of the now, where young is better than old, new better than antique (for that matter antique is a cell phone without a camera), we have missed the wisdom of our Grandparents. Really we wonder what value their stories, without computers or air-conditioning, could offer our tech filled lives?

   Unfortunately the opportunity to listen is slipping away from us. The generation born during the Great Depression is dying and their testimony will be lost. The saga of a true depression will be forgotten and we may come to believe that this current darkness is the worst it has ever been. That the bread lines were the same as the lines waiting in front of Best Buy.

Call you grandparents and ask to hear a story.

Thanks to everyone who contributed! Our T-shirt raised $400 for my friend’s ministry in Iraq and the change bucket raised $175 to help feed the world!