The View From Granny’s Back Porch

By Joy Mathis Chadwick

Let me just say that the first time I was referred to as “granny”, I was quite taken by surprise; I had always pictured a granny as being someone pretty old, and I am so very young (insert note of sarcasm). But the first time my sweet grandson said “ganny” in his baby voice, my heart just melted into a big puddle and I’ve been Granny ever since. No sweeter word! So with that being said, let me give you just a glimpse of what four year old Benny The Wonder Boy (BTWB) and I see from my back porch.
In the summertime after supper, we sometimes like to finish the hot day with a pretty spirited water gun fight. And even if the temperatures are reaching triple digits, sometimes in our craziness we throw caution to the wind and Pawpaw will build a fire in the firepit, a perfect combination for little boys and water guns. (Yes, we watch him like a hawk!!) In the last couple of years I had maneuvered a small plastic kiddie pool onto the back porch and would fill it with soap bubbles. I’m not sure which one of us enjoyed that more! But BTWB has just about outgrown the little kiddie pool and water guns have now taken its place. As the evening winds down, I’ll pull him onto my lap and we’ll rock and tell stories and speculate about everything he can spy with his little eyes. We live in the middle of a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere in the Ozark mountains; our view is nothing short of amazing and we can usually spot a few deer or sometimes even a bear wandering across the far field. “Granny, why do some ‘deers’ have horns? Granny, why doesn’t a bear have horns? Granny, can we go pet the bear? Granny, we can shoot the bear with the water gun!” You get the gist.

But my very favorite back porch thing to do with BTWB is to sit quietly and listen to the whippoorwills and watch the lightning bugs in the dark summer sky. (Quiet is a very rare occurrence, but how can I learn from BTWB if he’s quiet; how can he learn from me if he’s not? So we take whatever unfolds.) The only thing that could possibly make an evening any more perfect would be distant thunder and summer lightning, accompanied by a slight cool breeze. The night blooming jasmine on the nearby fence row only adds to my sensory overload. We wonder what the whippoorwills are saying, and do they only talk at night? (A whippoorwill resembles a small crow; there’s nothing fancy about it at all. Have you ever heard a whippoorwill? Theirs is a melancholy cry, and it’s kind of haunting from a distance; the one who perches in the tree near the back porch is not nearly so enjoyable.) We wonder why did God make mosquitoes, and why do they have to make us itch so badly? (But if we didn’t have the mosquitos, what would the beautiful dragonflies eat? “Granny, do the dragons itch?”) We wonder why God decided to make a flying bug whose tail lights up like a twinkle light. (“Granny, why doesn’t a bear have a ‘lighted up’ behind?)

When I was a kid growing up in south Arkansas, a favorite summertime memory was catching lightning bugs in MY granny’s big field behind her house. My cousins and I could easily spend hours doing this; we never worried about a snake; we never worried about getting lost in the nearby woods; we never worried about shoes; no country kid wore shoes in the summer except to church. My granny would give us a fruit jar for our lightning bugs with small holes poked in the lid; this was the precursor to today’s glow sticks. Eventually we would feel sorry for the little bugs and set them free. But the overall comfort aspect of this childhood memory was not only being with my granny and the cousins I loved so dearly, but just the peacefulness of a summer night watching the twinkling in the dark summer sky from the thousands of tiny lightning bugs doing just what they were supposed to be doing.
As Christians, are we doing just what we’re supposed to be doing? Like the little lightning bugs who light up the dark summer sky, Christians are called to shine our lights, too.

I look around our little country home and see a pretty big collection of things that give off light. In my craft room closet there is a bare bulb; I’m not sure what happened to the modest cover for it; it may have had an unhappy ending during a light bulb change. But yet that bare bulb shines when the switch is turned on; there’s just nothing pretty about it; no warm fuzzy feeling; but when you need it, it’s there. And in sharp contrast in this same room, there is a flea market chandelier that not only gives off light, it also looks pretty nice too; its looks alone just make you want to get closer so you can see it. If you had to pick between the prettiest light source, it would probably be a hands-down easy decision. Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world, and goes on to say that a city set on a hillside cannot be hidden. Christians are visible; people are looking at us, watching us.They may see our light through a crack in the partially closed closet door, or they may see our light as we minister to the needs of others. People watch us whether we’re acting like Christians or not. If we preach Jesus (and I use that word in the context of exhorting or speaking of), we’ve got to keep in mind that people will look at our outward being, our actions, first; and they probably will have to like what they see before they really listen to what we have to say. People who need the Lord need to see Christians in action; a bare bulb in a cluttered closet will do its job when the switch is flipped, but the chandelier will get your attention from the other room just from the way it looks, whether it’s shining or not. But when I need the light from the chandelier and flip the switch, I not only see that it’s doing its job, I like what I see; I want to spend more time in this room just because of the light. I rarely want to spend any more time than necessary in my cluttered craft closet. Are we attracting others to our light, or do we shine only if someone approaches us and flips our switch?

Somewhere in the tool shed there is a flood light that we keep “just in case of an emergency”. I don’t even want to think what kind of emergency around here would require something like that in the darkness of night, but if it should happen, we’ve got it. A flood light is like bringing out the big guns; ever had a flood light in your face? It just leaves you almost blinded and overpowers everything else. Sometimes just a plain old flashlight will easily get the job done. Both of these lighting essentials are usually used when the situation calls for more light; we click them on only when there is an urgency. They burn out if left on for long periods of time. We know Christians like that, don’t we? The flood light Christians focus on one thing only and not the total person; do we pick at someone’s flaws and forget their soul? The flashlight Christians are sure to click on for an emergency, but need a battery recharge when the offering plate is passed.

The Bible tells us that on DAY ONE, the beginning of time as we know it, God didn’t have to create it, He just SPOKE it – and there was light. And He saw that the light was GOOD, and He separated it from the darkness. God is calling us to separate ourselves from the darkness, and we can only do that through His power. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that on my own. I’m so glad that The Creator Of The Whole Entire Universe knew from DAY ONE that I would come along in a few thousand years and tell y’all about lightning bugs in the night sky.

One small lightning bug might not make the whole night sky light up, but when there are thousands, it is a sight to behold. I think that must be how God views his children when we all are showing our lights at the same time. Be a bug; find another bug; go into the darkness and show some light!
And this was the view from Granny’s porch.