My Hero

This is Mabel Harper. This picture was taken in 1940 for her graduation. Mabel was the youngest of three children born to Frank and Missouri Harper. The Harpers were not Christians.  

Mabel married a handsome young man and they started their life together. But Mabel and her new husband weren’t Christians. Mabel decided she needed to find a church because she was pregnant and she wanted her kids to go to church even if she never went when she was a kid.

Mabel tried a church in their town in Ohio but it was a Pentecostal church and it was a bit too crazy for her. So then she thought she’d try the little Church of Christ in town.

After the first Sunday the preacher met with her and showed her a simple illustration with a pencil that had been all chewed up and he took a napkin and covered the pencil. He told her that is exactly what Christ does to our sin. He covers our sin.

That clicked with her. The very next Sunday she went forward and was baptized. She never looked back. A few weeks later her husband was baptized as well.

This is Mabel from just a couple years ago. Mabel Irene Sheridan. My grandmother, my hero. She is a beautiful person both inside and out. And listen, Sunday after Sunday, month after month she took her kids to church. Year after year, decade after decade my grandma went to church with her family and she did the very best that she could. She is the reason I stand up to preach every week.

My grandma is one of the most beautiful women I have ever known and she is the reason I will be in heaven one day. Her health is now failing. I feel helpless but not hopeless. I have no doubts about my grandmother’s eternal destiny.

I am grateful for my grandmother’s ceaseless prayers for me and all of her grandchildren. Her deepest desire is that her children and grandchildren will be in heaven. She won’t see all of them, but she will see this one again someday.

My prayer is that her children and grandchildren will desire to see her again someday as well. They can but they have to enter through the same door that she did. It is only through faith in Christ Jesus that anyone can go to heaven. The same faith that I hold on to in a sincere manner…the faith that was first in my grandmother. (2 Timothy 1:5)