Testimony Tuesday -- God Shows Us the Fruit!

This testimony is from Shelly Jones.  She shared it in 2009 but it's worth a re-share! 

We just started a small group at a friends house. We'll be meeting with some people from church for several weeks and doing a study on the subject of love. One of the first things we talked about was identifying a person in our life who is very loving and talking about what we can learn about love from them.

This led me to the story of Bertha Griffith. It's not really my story and I'm sure that I have some of the details wrong. It's a story about a very important lady in my Dad's life and what her story taught me about love. The story of Bertha Griffith is in two parts. Each part has taught me something different about love.

PART 1

My dad was about 16 when he became a Christian. It was the late 60's and he was a bit of a long haired misfit. His parents got divorced when he was 14 and he moved with his mom to a new city in northern California. So aside from looking different, he was in a new place. He's not really a gregarious type of person who jumps quickly into a new group even now. I'm guessing he was a lot more shy then. He started going to church because two cute girls at school invited him to come sing in their youth choir. They needed tenors. Long story short, after spending a little while around the kids in the choirs, my dad became a Christian and started going to Sunday services regularly. 

After a few services some of the "elders" of the church pulled him aside to "straighten him out" about his appearance. From what I've been told, they were giving him a hard time about his appearance in general (his hair was too long and too bushy, he wasn't especially well groomed, etc.) and his style of dress (much too casual for church). In the middle of this conversation a very well respected woman in the church, Bertha Griffith, stepped between my dad and his accusers. She physically stood between him and them. She gathered up all 4 feet 10 inches and 70-some-odd-years of herself and said, "Now you leave him alone! The Lord and I have talked and he's going to be just fine."

Lesson #1 - Love accepts people as they are and sees them for what they have the potential to be.

While others in that church saw my dad as a long haired loser kid, Bertha saw his potential. But she didn't pull him aside to lecture him about how he was wasting his potential. She just accepted him as he was and let him decide to live up to his potential on his own. The truth was, my dad was a hurting kid who probably just needed someone to believe in him.

PART 2

Years later, after my parents had met and married, they moved to the area in southern California where I grew up. When they went to a nearby church (with tiny baby me in tow), who was standing at the door greeting but Bertha Griffith? Hundreds of miles away from where she first said that he would be "Just fine" she recognized that misfit teenage boy all grown up. She smiled and said, "I want to show you something." She pulled out her pocket book and produced a photo of my dad at 16. She said, "I want you to know that I've been praying for you ever since you came to that church as a teenager. I knew you would turn out ok."

Lesson #2 - Love follows through on what it believes.

Bertha believed in my dad's potential. As far as I know, aside from that one time she defended him, she never made any grand gestures on his behalf.  She didn't write him letters when he went off to college or even keep track of him in any way. She may never have known what came of his life, but she did what she could on his behalf. She just prayed. And lo and behold... that long haired misfit turned out just fine.

We all went to the same church for years until Bertha passed away. I think she was in her late nineties when she finally did. Every once in a while she would take me aside at church and tell me about how she prayed for my dad all those years. And she would whisper, "I still do. And now I pray for you too."

That's what Bertha Griffith taught me about love.