On Wednesday, September 5, Grandma Mattie, one of my wife Nickie's grandmas, finally got to go home. She is now rejoicing in the promise and hope we have as Christians and hanging out with the likes of Paul, the Disciples, loved ones of the family of faith, and Jesus Himself.
I wrote this as a tribute to Grandma Mattie several years ago. She was the greatest, and simplest witness of God's love I have ever known. I hope that introducing her this way you to will know that God's promise to use you is as strong as it was in Grandma Mattie's life!
Least Likely Among Us, Or So We Think
“Brothers, think of what you were when you were
called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were
influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of
the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to same the
strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and
the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may
boast before Him.”
1 Corinthians 1: 26-29 (NIV)
The decision to move was not an easy one.
But at their age Ron and Grandma Mattie knew the time had come. Both were
having some difficult health issues, and the farm was much too big to keep up.
Even so, they had been on the farm “forever”. There had been so many memories
that had been made there.
Grandma Mattie and her first husband had
raised their six children on the farm. As their kids grew up, they got married
and had children of their own, and so grandchildren frequented the farm. There
had been family reunions, holidays, and lots of card playing…lots! The kitchen
was the spot for such card playing and Grandma Mattie always had food, coffee,
and soda on hand for anyone who may drop by.
Then there was the land on which the farm
was located. Red Wing, Minnesota,
is a beautiful, small town situated on the banks of the Mississippi
River. It is known for Red
Wing Pottery and Red Wing Shoes.
On the other side of “The Big Muddy” is Wisconsin.
It gets cold, sometimes very cold, and it snows a lot. Spring is short and the
summers are long, hot, and humid. Fall is breathtaking. Everywhere you look
there are, as someone has said, “leaves dripping with color as if God has just
gotten done painting them”.
Probably the most stunning aspect of
Red Wing is the bluffs. These
magnificent river peaks seem to just stretch out of the Earth itself
reaching into the clouds above. There is one such bluff that is directly in
back of the Ron and Grandma Mattie’s farm house. You can walk and climb your
way up to the top. Once there you find the caves. There are two of them up
there. They are made of sandstone, so you can easily carve your initials into
them. These caves aren’t deep and there are no secret passages, but they are
still caves. They can provide shelter from rain, snow, and the sun. You can
stand at the entrance and look out over the country-side and stand amazed at
the creative genius of God. And of course they have been a magnet for youthful
indiscretions over the years, too.
So the time had come. Ron and Grandma
Mattie bought a house that was in town with much less land to take care of.
When you move into a new house there seems to always be an urge to fix this,
paint that, and so on. This was the case for Grandma Mattie and the backyard
deck was her target. It was a priority because it was the deck that would allow
her to sit outside and experience the weather in the good months, and enjoy the
plants, shrubs, and colorful flower beds she had transplanted from the farm.
But the deck needed new paint.
“I don’t like to pay the high prices of
the contractors,” she always said. So Grandma Mattie decided to look through
the newspaper to find out if she could find someone who might be interested in
helping her out.
“I
don’t even remember his name,” she confessed. “He was just this huge, dark
giant that looked kind of oriental, like the Samoans I saw when I had visited
those islands in the Pacific a few years ago. So I call him the Samoan
gorilla.”
He had been painting for a while when
Grandma Mattie noticed that it was lunch time. “I forgot to ask him how much he
charged, so I thought if I offered him some lunch, we could talk about how much
I was going to pay.”
“I was a little afraid because every
word out of his mouth was a swear word, even when he came into the house. But
we talked anyway, and I asked him some things about his life.”
It turns out that he was from Hawaii and he had spent
time in prison for aggravated assault. He beat up his former wife, and spent
some years after that behind bars.
“I asked him if he ever attended
church. I asked him where he would go when he dies. Then I pulled out some
tracts I had handy (she always
has tracts ready) and we read them together.”
She says, “I don’t remember exactly
that happened. It was all about 20 minutes before he prayed with me there at my
kitchen table to make Jesus Christ the Lord of his life.”
“I told him he needed to join a church
and to start reading the Bible. I saw him only a few times briefly after that,
but he told me on one of these visits that he was going to church now, and that
he was trying to join Prison Fellowship.”
In a letter that Grandma Mattie wrote
to her son Clay and his wife Ruth she recounted this story:
“The two men
working for Menard’s were Gene and
Luke. They
worked nearly a week. I never found a
convenient
time to talk to them. But in a state of
emergency I
wrote a letter telling how to be saved,
sent a Billy
Graham tract and $20. I figured they would
see the $20
as a tip and feel obligated to read the tract.
And God’s
word will never return void. Who knows, I
may be the
only one person in the world who wants
these two to
know Jesus. And I probably will never
see them
again in this life time. They finished the fence
(except the
gates which Steve will do) and drove off.
I had thrown
the envelopes in the car, one on one side,
and one on
the other. And I prayed that God would
save both of
them.”
For
the last few years Grandma Mattie’s health has not been real good. She
struggles with heart problems, emphysema, and recently she fell down and broke
her hip. My wife received an email from her dad with this story:
“So, as she (Mattie) was lying in bed in pain
at
Fairway Hospital. Patty Stephenhagen was brought
in by her
parents to talk to mom. Patty is about 50
Years old,
around five kids raised by grandpa and
grandma, and
now diagnosed with terminal colon
cancer. The
doctor was in mom’s room for a post
operative
exam, and the nurse was asking them to wait
outside. But
the doctor said, “I’ll just wait over here”,
and walked
over by the window and watched. About
15 minutes
later, mom flat on her back in pain, led
Patty to the
Lord. Amazing.”
Grandma
Mattie is a very special woman of God. Through her evangelistic efforts over
the years she has had a hand in hundreds of peoples’ salvation experience in
Red Wing, Minnesota.
The love that she has for God and for people, and her heartfelt desire to see
God and people united pours forth from every pore in her body. And though that is the case now,
it has not always been that way. In fact, one could say that Grandma
Mattie is one of the least likely
persons to have been used by God for such glorious work.
Mattie
Mae Turner was born on January
2, 1922 in Pennington Gap,
Virginia, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains where her parents owned a small
farm. Her parents by all accounts were not a very happy couple. When Mattie was
a small girl her mom left the family. A couple of years later her dad died. She
was then moved, at the age of nine, to London,
Kentucky to live with Charlie and
Agnus Clay. During the next few years of her life she moved to four different
towns in Kentucky,
the last being Berea, Kentucky. At the age of fourteen she
enrolled at Berea
College in their
secondary school. While there she was allowed to work half a day and spent the
rest of her day in school. It was during this time that Mattie lost all contact
with what was left of her family. “I don’t remember anything of my
grandparents. Since I moved at the age of nine my brothers and sisters seem
almost like strangers. During my school days, I remember being lonely most of
the time.” She remained at Berea
until she was twenty-one.
Mattie
went from Berea
to Louisville
to become a nurse’s aid. It was when she was in Louisville that she met Jim Lifto at a
birthday party that was for one of his army friends in 1942. After a brief
courtship she quit her job and they moved to Red Wing and got married in July,
1943.
When
Jim was deployed to fight in WW II Mattie went to live and work in Cleveland with her
sister. She then went back to have her first child. When Jim came back Mattie
says, “We were poor and we fought a lot. We had six children, played a lot,
drank and played cards.” She goes on to say that, “I felt a failure as a mother
overall.”
In
1954 a woman by the name of Ardelle Ruble invited Mattie to go to church with
her at the First Baptist Church of Red Wing. Ardelle Ruble was part of a prayer
group that specifically prayed for opportunities to share their faith in Jesus
Christ called the “Gang of Sister’s”. It was within this “holy gang” of women
that Mattie felt something that she never experienced as a child- love. And so
at the age of thirty-seven Mattie Mae Lifto became a newly adopted daughter of
God!
Grandma
Mattie had seen and experienced many struggles in her life since that moment.
Her husband eventually left her and married another woman. One of her daughters
was involved in a serious automobile accident and is completely paralyzed. One
of her sons ran away from home. Another son quietly volunteered for the Army
during the Vietnam War. Over the course of the last few years her health, and
the health of her husband, has been cause for much concern. But through it all
Grandma Mattie has stood tall with the ample help of God’s mighty right hand.
In
1978 Grandma Mattie sat down with one of her sons, Richard (the one that ran
away) and talked about her life. During the conversation she said that the most
important thing she could tell a person to do is, “accept Christ, believe the
word of God from cover-to-cover, obey it completely, and be controlled by the
Holy Spirit, and conform to the image of Jesus.”
If
you would have known Grandma Mattie during her wild days you probably would not
have given any thought to her being used by God in such a powerful and eternal
way. If you, as a Christian, knew Grandma Mattie in those days your thoughts
may have been more like she is the least
likely person to become a Christian and live an unbridled life of service
to God.
When
I think about Grandma Mattie and her life-story, it reminds me of what a
mysterious God I know. He is in fact weird
I think. He is completely illogical from a humans stand point. God never has
used the easy way, or the most obvious. This is one reason why I believe in
Him. No human being could have come up with a plan like He has. Much of it
doesn’t make sense, because much of the time God uses the least likely people to accomplish the most important tasks He calls
us to. People like Grandma Mattie. People like you and me. People like Gideon.
When
I was just a kid sitting in church was not an easy task. But every once in
awhile our pastor at First
Covenant Church
would say something that peeked my interest. Pastor Danhoff was giving a series
on the book of Judges and on this particular Sunday he was starting in chapter
six. Up to this time in my life I don’ think I had ever heard of Gideon. Pastor
Danhoff started to talk about Gideon by giving us an idea of what he believed
Gideon looked like. It was his belief that Gideon looked more-or-less like
Barney Fife, the loveable deputy sheriff on the Andy Griffith Show. I’m not
sure why that got my attention then but I know why I remember it now. If God
could use a person that was like Barney Fife then I have hope!
The
story of Gideon is an interesting one. The angel of the Lord, perhaps Jesus
Himself, appears to Gideon and tells him that he is the one that God has chosen
to deliver Israel
from the nomadic terror of the Midianites. If you can now picture Barney Fife
as Gideon then you can picture in your mind what I did on that Sunday. Upon
hearing this message Gideon goes into excuse mode. “But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how
can I save Israel?
My clan is the weakest of Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” (Judges 5:15 NIV) In other words Gideon is
saying, “But I am the least likely
person one could ever imagine for such a calling. You must be, well um,
mistaken.”
The
angel of the Lord assures Gideon that He has gotten it right and not to fear.
After Gideon tests God a time or two he begins to assemble an army. But the army
is much too big. The army of Israel is
eventually dwindled down to three hundred men. These men are given their orders
to attack at night. These soldiers carried not swords but trumpets, jars made
of clay, and torches. Gideon told them just to surround the camp and to follow
his lead (it is interesting that these three hundred men never doubted Gideon,
but Gideon doubted God all the way).
Then
as Gideon blew his trumpet the men followed. Then Gideon, with his torch inside
his jar threw the jar down. When the jar broke into many pieces his light
shined. I must confess that I have never heard what it sounds and looks like
when three hundred trumpets are blasting, three hundred jars are crashing, and
that many torches are blazing into the night time sky, but it proved very
effective. All of Israel’s
enemies turned on themselves in mass confusion and killed one another as Gideon
and his men looked on.
In
his commentary on Judges J. Vernon
McGee points out something very interesting. On that night it took broken jars
of clay for the light of the torches to shine forth. It reminds me of the
children’s song This Little Light of Mine.
It also reminds me of the passage of 2 Corinthians 4. It is in this passage
Paul writes about the light that God has given Christians in our hearts. Paul
also explains that we have this treasure of light in jars of clay. He goes on
to say that we, as Christians, are a hard pressed, perplexed, persecuted, and
struck down people.
So,
why does God put the valuable object of His light in fragile jars of clay? Paul
says that God does so because we should not make the mistake of thinking that
God’s great work is done by human might or reasoning. This work is done by God
through us. Just as God used Gideon and broken jars to let light shine out of
the darkness, He uses the broken jars of our lives to let the light of God to
shine. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Hide it under a
bushel? NO!” In order to sing this song with a genuine heart we must be willing
to become weak. Paul also wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, “But He, said to me,
‘My grace is made sufficient for you, for my power is
made perfect in your weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more
gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why,
for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, than I am strong.” (NIV)
Joni
Eareckson Tada is one such jar of clay. When she was a teenager her youthful
body was broken when she dove into the water and became paralyzed. At that time
many would have thought that Joni would be one of the least likely persons God could use. Joni, looking back may say as
much about her doubts at that time too.
But
through the broken jar of clay of Joni’s life, and body, God’s light has shined
so bright. She is an accomplished speaker, singer, and author. She even has her
own ministry and hosts a daily radio show.
I
have seen the original “Joni” movie and read a couple of her books. I have
heard her on the radio, and even have had the pleasure of listening to her
speak at a Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week Conference. Quite simply, Joni
is not just amazing, but indeed a huge blessing to so many people. The light of
God shines like a beacon splitting through the rough seas and dark nights of so
many people’s lives directing them to the lighthouse that is God Himself.
Joni
wrote this in an article on a topic much like this one, “He doesn’t look for
people who will fit in or stand out, but for those who will stand up.” Put
another way, a friend of mine Rusty said, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He
equips the called.” I am so happy that God doesn’t use the obvious people. If
He did then I wouldn’t be one of the called. I dare say that Grandma Mattie,
Gideon, or Joni wouldn’t either. God loves using the least likely of the human
race. Come to think of it God wouldn’t have used a person like Jesus either. I
think that puts us in pretty good company.
