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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
June 13, 2010
Children’s Sermon presented at
Church of the Crossroads, June 14, 1992.
© 1992 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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“Peace, Peas” Not Available
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THE WORK OF THY FINGERS
In Memory of
Earl Franklin Grossmann
June 13, 1902 — June 5, 1992
I
n the Bible, in Psalm 8, King David called out to God and said something like this:
O Lord...when I look at your heavens—the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place—the skies seem so huge! And people, in comparison, seem so very small. I wonder, Lord, how you could care at all about human beings when you have so much to keep you busy. And yet, you certainly do care about every one of us....
I think that’s pretty close to what the Bible says. You might want to read all of Psalm 8 with your family. King David said, When I look up at the skies, I see the work of God’s fingers. You and I can see the work of God’s fingers all around us in nature. When I think of the work of fingers, I often think of my grandfather’s hands, the big, strong, rough-palmed hands of Earl Grossmann, the farmer and carpenter. I think of those hands holding my son and my daughter when they were tiny babies. I think of Grampa’s hands folded in prayer.
I
’d like to show you a photograph I took of my grandparents. My wife and I were visiting them on their Wisconsin farm one summer day when Gramp and Gram were in their late seventies. Just as we all were sitting down to the noon meal, I said, “Hold it! Wait one second, please!” I grabbed my camera and stood up on a dining room chair to shoot this picture. In the background is a kitchen stove, and at the far corner of the table is Gramma. Her snow-white hair is tucked up in a hair net, her head is bowed, and her hands are folded in front of her chin. She’s wearing a dark sweater over a light-colored dress. Grampa is at the right side of the table, so he’s sort of facing Gramma, but at an angle. He’s wearing a dark work shirt and bib overalls. A long pencil is sticking up out of the bib pocket. His head is bowed. His arms are resting on the table; those big hands are folded above his empty white dinner plate.
On the table, between these folks, is a big bowl of boiled potatoes, and, closer to us, you see a bowl of peas with a spoon sticking up, and then two heavy coffee cups on saucers. The cups are filled to the brim. There’s a big pan of baked chicken in the foreground and a dish of red Jell-O with fruit cocktail in it. You can see a cottage cheese carton and two small milk pitchers—the pitchers were filled from the same jug, I can tell you, but Gram and Gramp used one to cream their coffee and the other to fill milk glasses.
The big dining room window to our left looks out toward the barn and the woods beyond. The window isn’t in this picture, but that’s where the wonderful light for this scene comes from. When I had snapped the shot, I sat down, and Grampa said the prayer.
After visiting my grandparents, when I returned home to Hawaii and got my pictures back from Kodak, I decided this might be my favorite of all the photos I have ever taken. I titled it “Peace, Peas, Meat, & Potatoes.” I thought it deserved a wider audience, so I wrote to Gram and Gramp and asked for model releases; I wanted their permission to publish the picture. But they didn’t answer me. I wrote again and they wrote back about other things, but they didn’t mention the form I had sent.
So the next time I visited, I talked to them about it. I asked them again if they would sign the paper. They were quiet a minute, and then Gramma said, “Well, Buddy, whatever Grampa says, I’ll go along with that.”
I looked at Gramp and I waited. At last he spoke, in a kindly growl. “Ma and me,” he said, “we don’t pray for advertising.”
W
ell, that was Earl Grossmann, all right. I had to laugh. I tried to argue, but I had to laugh because I never did get my paper signed. That was Earl Grossmann, the man whose big hands will always remind me of God’s fingers placing the stars in the heavens. I am so glad that Grampa held me, and my children also, in those strong hands.
I pray that you, too, will always feel the embrace of your family and friends and of the Lord Himself. I hope strong, gentle hands will remind you, forever, of God’s great love for you.
Amen.
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I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my
others). Write to me at the following address. Please
be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and
mention what page you are writing about.
Thanks! BUD GROSSMANN
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This page was updated Sun, Jun 13, 2010, 11:23PM
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© 2010 by Bud Grossmann
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