Grandma’s Dollar
Grandma Shelton was raised near the tiny White County town of Sidon. Across the hills to the east was the settlement of Clay where my Grandfather Shelton grew up. Grandma once said the only thing she used to know about “that Shelton bunch” was that they “drank and made music.” However, the influence Grandma had on Grandpa was great over a lifetime of marriage. Ironically, on the very morning before Grandpa would die suddenly that April afternoon in 1968, he sat and drank coffee with his oldest daughter speaking of how he had been made a better man because of his Hazel. No doubt many of us men could say the same thing of our godly wives.
Grandma loved to study the Bible. I can remember her talking to her neighbor, Mrs. Cox, about their Sunday School lesson for the coming week. I remember picking berries with Grandma in her backyard while she talked about the Bible to me. I will never forget watching her hug my dad that night in 1970 when he and I were both baptized the same night. However, one of my most vivid memories of Grandma is from December 24, 1976.
By Christmas of 1976, Grandma’s health – both physical and mental – had begun to fail badly. She was then living with one of her daughters. On Christmas Eve, my family went to take our gifts to her. She was sitting in a chair in my aunt’s den and, as she began to open her gifts, she started to cry. When we asked why she was crying she told us it was because she didn’t deserve any gifts since she had been unable to shop for us. Instead, she gave me a Christmas card. Inside the card was a single dollar bill. That was my Christmas present from Grandma that year.
That was also the last Christmas present I would ever receive from her. She died peacefully in her sleep on April 1, 1977. B 96072317 C -- that is not a typographical error – that is the serial number from that dollar bill. The reason I know the serial number is because that dollar and Christmas card have been carefully kept in their original envelope in a lockbox for the past forty-six years. Every so often I take them out and look at them to remind myself what makes gifts precious are not the gifts themselves, but the love that motivates the giving. The card and that dollar represent the love of an ailing old woman who was still thinking of others when she could have easily been feeling sorry for herself. Such a legacy is a wonderful one to leave and a most precious gift.
“And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them…” Luke 21:1-3 (NASB)
While Jesus spoke specifically about the widow giving out of her poverty while others gave out of their surplus, the widow’s gift was also certainly motivated by love that rose above any feelings of self-pity she may have had. What made the two small copper coins or that single dollar precious is the love of the two women who gave them. Grandma’s dollar is worth much more than anything she could have purchased with ten thousand other dollars.
Jim Shelton