In Honor of Grandma Mattie

  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.