Church with Grandma

Every Sunday morning his grandmother took him with her to their local church. He sat on a rickety old bench, where his feet didn’t touch the ground, and swung his legs. He would stare absent-mindedly at a hole in the ground, while the man at the front talked on.

There was a lot of fighting in his home, so when he was old enough he planned on leaving. The morning he chose to leave, his grandmother came by the house to ask him to accompany her to church as usual. He was in a hurry to leave and said he couldn’t as he was meeting someone. He was 18 years old and climbed over the wall from his home.

A few years later he found himself in America and he got word that his grandmother had died. He sought out the nearest church and went inside. But he had forgotten. He was in America.

Most of the churches here are only a couple hundred years old. Standing in that new building with brightly coloured paint on the walls, the tears began to run. He would give anything to be back in his local church, swinging his legs on that bench next to his grandmother.

You see, children don’t appreciate the world in which they live, until they are old enough to know different.

They're not supposed to appreciate it.

When he was 5 years old he knew nothing else but the world in which he lived. Every building in his homeland was old, made of weathered stone, he longed to see a skyscraper, a building made of glass. Now, he longed to go back to a land he could never return to.

The old rickety wooden bench on which he sat, had been sat on by Roman soldiers. The local church where his grandmother took him was over 1600 years old. The star on the ground, at which he starred without seeing, marked the spot of Jesus's birth. 

Bethlehem had been his home. The church of nativity had been his grandmothers gift. With only his future in mind he left Palestine without looking back. Only with the wisdom of age did he appreciate the gifts of his youth.

He had sat bored in church as thousands of children around the world do. No longer able to return to his war-torn country, the faded memories of church with his grandmother will be cherished forever.