EYES OF LOVE

by Pastor Tom

“Above all hold, unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
-1 Peter 4:8

I had three sets of grandparents when I was growing up, and I never really thought it was unusual. Without going into the how’s and why’s of it, I believe it turned out to be a very special blessing in my life.

My step-grandpa was named Tullah. He was a very talented and gifted woodworker, carpenter, cabinetmaker; an artist, really. With the ability to create intricate inlaid furniture as well as design full-sized buildings (he drew and built several beautiful churches), he constantly turned out unbelievable masterpieces. The things that man could do with a piece of wood!

As I grew up, I watched Grandpa build, piece by piece, year by year, a unique house he had designed. He did it all by himself, in the evenings and on weekends, with the occasional help of my Dad, while his family lived in a one room building he had constructed. He even hand-faced the stone that made up the front facade.

I loved building model cars when I was a kid, and once Grandpa built a scale-sized car dealership for my room, complete with showroom, operating glass doors and a service center in the back. He played guitar and sang crazy songs, had served in the trenches of WW1, and was a Christian fellow who could have written the book on courtesy.

The last summer of his life, I spent a lot of time with him on his eight acre property and was then old enough to really get to know him and to love him a lot. When he died, everyone in our family cried and cried.

We had a picture of Grandpa in our living room. One day, a visiting buddy of mine picked it up and asked me who it was. After I told him, he asked, “What’s wrong with his face?” Wondering what in the world he was talking about, I walked over and took the picture from his hand. When I saw it, I remembered. Grandpa had a large, very prominent red birthmark covering half of his face. It seemed so strange. I certainly knew it was there, but it was as if I had never seen that birthmark before.

Eventually, I figured it out. My friend never had the opportunity to know and then come to love my Grandpa. If he had, he wouldn’t have noticed it either, because love makes things like that invisible.