Family Stories

Family Stories

[Jesus said,] “Where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.” Matthew 18:20

One of my recent happy memories is of a trip my dad and I took to his grandfather’s homestead deep in our beloved Kentucky hills. In the evenings, as we sat on the porch and listened to the whip-poor-wills, Dad told stories of how the members of the strong community of his childhood had stood together against floods, failed crops, and epidemics.

Sunday morning, we attended the “Preaching and Dinner on the Grounds” at the family cemetery. Wooden folding chairs were set up under the pines on top of the hill. Gradually, the people gathered, greeting one another and asking about absent kin. The service began with “Amazing Grace,” sung in a slow, twangy way, followed by the more peppy “Now Let Us Have a Little Talk with Jesus,” complete with resounding bass. The next song, “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” was the signal for the worshipers to leave their chairs and greet one another. By the second stanza, the women were hugging and crying, and everyone was ready for the sermon.

Tall, rugged Preacher Howard then strode to the lectern and announced, “We meet in the cemetery as a reminder we’re all gonna die and meet the Man who hung between two thieves to save us.”

Then he started “preaching hard,” his words punctuated by the women’s Amens as they glanced toward their men swapping stories at the side of the cemetery. The children played tag near the old stones that marked the graves of our ancestors and chased each other toward the plywood tables soon to be spread with the finest in country cooking. The rule of most Kentucky cooks seems to be “Honey, I’d rather have a bushel too much than a teaspoon not enough,” so at the closing hymn, the overflowing picnic baskets were opened, and we filled our plates with the abundance from hillside gardens and country henhouses. Clusters of relatives balanced plates on the tops of gravestones and traded gossip. I breathed deeply of the mountain air, refreshed by the family stories and no-nonsense presentation of the gospel.

Okay, so the country cooking helped too. —SANDRA

Lord, help me to remember to look for you in ordinary activities. Help me to sense you in the loving acts of those around me. And may others sense you through my actions and words.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart.

—SIR HUMPHRY DAVY (1778–1829), ENGLISH CHEMIST