A Grandmother and a Mother

A small boy sits on a stool beside his grandmother. She is telling him, once again, about Abraham, and Moses, and King David. His mother looks up from her work and smiles. None of them knows yet how far this little boy will go.

The boy is Timothy. He grew up in Lystra, a small Roman town in the hills of what is now southern Turkey. The book of Acts tells us his mother was a Jewish woman who believed, and his father was a Greek. So Timothy grew up between two worlds. When Paul came through Lystra on his journeys, Timothy was already a young believer that everyone spoke well of, and Paul took him along as a helper. Years later, Timothy is a church leader himself, and Paul writes him a letter. It is one of the last letters Paul ever wrote.

Paul begins warmly. To Timothy, my dearly beloved son. I thank God, he says, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. He remembers Timothy's tears the last time they said goodbye, and he longs to see him again, so that he may be filled with joy. And then Paul remembers something more. I am reminded of the sincere faith that is in you, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and that I am sure lives in you too. It is a beautiful line. Faith that dwelt first in a grandmother. Then in a mother. Then in a son. Like a lamp carried from one hand to another, through a family.

Because of this, Paul says, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you. The picture is of embers in a fire, which need stirring and blowing on to blaze up again. Timothy may have been a shy person. Paul goes on: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Do not be ashamed, Paul says, of the testimony about our Lord, or of me his prisoner. Share in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.

Later in the same letter, Paul comes back to Timothy's childhood. Hard times are coming, Paul warns, and people will be led astray. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed. You know who you learned it from. That is, Lois and Eunice, and Paul too. And you know that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. A grandmother and a mother had opened the scriptures to a little boy. They could not have known he would one day help lead the church. They simply did what was in front of them, day after day, at home.

Teaching children the scriptures at home was a strong Jewish custom. The book of Deuteronomy tells parents to speak God's words to their children when they sit at home and when they walk along the road. And the first-century Jewish historian Josephus boasted that Jewish people learned their laws so thoroughly from their earliest years that they could recite them more readily than their own names.

A grandmother and a mother. You'll find Lois and Eunice in Second Timothy chapter one, verses one to seven, and chapter three, verses fourteen and fifteen. Faith can be passed on in the most ordinary places, around a table, by a fire. So here is a question to carry with you. Who has helped your faith grow, and who could you pass it on to?