Use Me, Lord

My grandmother changed my life. Not by teaching me to crochet, although she did do that. Not by showing me how to can fig preserves or roll up cinnamon rolls, but she did that, too.

My life wasn’t changed when she taught me the value of saving pie tins, bits of fabric scraps, Cool Whip cups, the bags from the outside of the newspaper, milk jugs, or even butter tub lids. Grandmother helped to change my life with three little words.

Use me Lord.

For as long as I can remember, my grandmother got up every morning and uttered those three words to God. She usually followed that request with “Let me be useful to somebody today.” As the years progressed, she explained to me that her eyes didn’t work, her legs didn’t work, and her hands only worked part of the time. Then it was all the more important for her to be used by God. Only a God like ours could take someone blind and crippled and do a great work.

And that He did.

Sometimes my grandmother used her resources to help a family pay their light bill or their house payment. Many times God used her to encourage a friend or a family member.

My grandmother was full of free advice and always ready with a listening ear. If you wanted her to keep a secret, she told not a soul. But if you wanted her to share the news, she had most of King Road called before you could hang up the phone.

Grandmother was in her nineties when she purchased the first piano for the grandchild who was a budding musician and paid the way to my first writer’s conference. She proved to me that God uses you until the very end.

Let me point out, Moses was eighty years old when God asked him to go to Pharaoh and request the release of the Israelites. Do you think Moses thought he had already fulfilled his plan for the Lord? He was just getting started.

How about Noah? The Bible says, Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah was walking with God and probably thought he had already lived out God’s plan for him when God called him to build the ark. Noah was six hundred when the floods came! God didn’t tell him to order a big boat from the local boat builder; he told Noah to build it with his own hands. Can you imagine a six hundred year old man building a boat?

Wherever you are in your life, God can use you – if you are willing. That is what my grandmother taught me. He can work through you to change the world. As a tribute to the faith of a ninety-four year old lover of the Lord, won’t you join me today as we say, “Use me, Lord”?

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate. Proverbs 31:30-31 NIV