Lewis Grizzard was a syndicated newspaper columnist, the author of a number of books, and a rather sophisticated writer who pretended to be a redneck. He was brash, irreverent, and sometimes obscene. I often felt that he was laughing at something, such as, his failure in three marriages, to keep from crying. He came off in most of his columns as crusty and tough, but now and then he wrote of some of the heart issues of life and communicated a profound depth of understanding and a winsome tenderness.
In one of his columns, Grizzard wrote about the Church. He described standing outside the church in his hometown of Moreland, Georgia, on a cold day. It had been at least ten years since he had been inside, but there were still roots there.
As he reminisced about the youth group that met on Sunday nights, he recounted how two rowdy boys in town broke into a store and were required to attend the youth group for six months punishment. The first night they attended, Grizzard recalled, they beat up two boys and threw a hymnal at a nice woman who led the group and always brought cookies. Fortunately, she ducked just in time. Grizzard remembered her words to the boys: “I don’t approve of what
you boys did here tonight, and neither does Jesus. But if He can forgive you, I guess I can too.” Then she handed them the plate of cookies. The last Grizzard heard, both boys had grown up to become “good daddies with steady jobs” who rarely miss a Sunday in church. He concluded that it was the first miracle he ever saw.
We experience and remember the Church in a lot of different ways. At the center of our thinking, we need to remember there is no Christianity apart from the Church. This is true because there is no such thing as solitary Christianity.
Grizzard remembered it as a miracle. And that it is!