The Way It Used to Be: Grandpa's Guns

In my grandparents bedroom, simple furniture was the rule.  A telephone for those late night calls, a clothes rack for the quick-to-go clothes for him.  Simple and neat.

But in Grandpa's closet, a pair of pistols and a Winchester rifle.  And in Grandma's dresser, the wide middle drawer was the ammunition cabinet, quite full.

Looking in his closet one day, I asked why he had the guns in there.  "Oh, they're from a long time ago, Bryan.  I carried them when I took the buggy out from Corrigan toward Livingston, riding from one lumber mill to another as the doctor."

"But why?, asked the young Bryan.  "Well, grandson, you just never knew when you might meet a snake!"

East Texas Big Thicket 110 years ago was a no-man's land, a Wild West area.  No phones, no law enforcement, no help, sparsely populated.  And there were "snakes" living there.  The history of that time and place reads so distinctly foreign to the way we see the world today.

Grandpa had fire-power for self-protection.  He also was a sportsman who loved to hunt with a .410 shotgun, because it was so much smaller, and therefore more "sportsman-like" than the big shotguns.

It was a different world.  His fire-arms were for respect of life, to be touched only by adults, to be used in an ethical and careful and thoughtful way.  But it was a different world.  In the small Methodist Church where they were married, in Moscow, Texas, there was a grooved and worn place on the right side of the surface of the pulpit, where a gun was kept.  The pastor put it there the Sunday after someone in the congregation put a bullet into the wall just behind the pulpit, apparently displeased by the pastor's sermon.

Looking back, we can't take into today's society what we remember (or heard about) from another time and place.  I'm so thankful for police, the Sherrifs, the Rangers, and militias of all kinds, up to the National Guard, that keep back so much (but never all) of the evil this world can generate.

I'm grateful for mental health professionals who can use good counsel and good medicine to control the worst and most troubled among us.

And I'm thankful to God for the grace and courage to move around in  a sometimes evil world, for he enables all of us to do the very best we can in TODAY's circumstances, fully intent on making all of life good for others.  Life is always full of difficult choices, and by the love of God, you can always find the encouraging grace with He offers.

Find a way to share that encouraging grace with someone.  And we'll find ways to share that with the youngest who are yet so innocent about the world around them.