I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. 2 Timothy 1:5
Hand in hand, my grandson and I skipped across the parking lot to find a special back-to-school outfit. A preschooler now, he was excited about everything, and I was determined to ignite his happiness into joy. I’d just seen a coffee mug with the inscription, “Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.” Frosting equals fun, glitter, joy! That’s my job description as his grandma, right? That . . . and more.
In his second letter to his spiritual son Timothy, Paul calls out his sincere faith—and then credits its lineage both to Timothy’s grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). These women lived out their faith in such a way that Timothy also came to believe in Jesus. Surely, Lois and Eunice loved Timothy and provided for his needs. But clearly, they did more. Paul points to the faith living in them as the source of the faith later living in Timothy.
My job as a grandmother includes the “frosting” moment of a back-to-school outfit. But even more, I’m called to the frosting moments when I share my faith: Bowing our heads over chicken nuggets. Noticing angelic cloud formations in the sky as God’s works of art. Chirping along with a song about Jesus on the radio. Let’s be wooed by the example of moms and grandmas like Eunice and Lois to let our faith become the frosting in life so others will want what we have.
How have you been influenced by the faith of others? How are you living out your faith so that others might be influenced?
Dear God, help me to invest my time in living out my faith before others.
INSIGHT
Luke tells us in Acts 16:1 that Timothy’s mother was a Jewish believer but his father was a Greek. His mixed heritage, together with the fact that Timothy had already earned the respect of believers in Jesus in his Roman hometown of Lystra (vv. 1–2), caught Paul’s attention. He and Silas were in the process of helping Jewish and gentile followers of Christ understand their relationship to the law of Moses and to one another (15:22). Elders of the church in Jerusalem had recently come to some important conclusions about ways to welcome and encourage gentiles into the faith (vv. 7–21). Paul apparently saw Timothy as an example of a young gentile who was growing in the ways of Jesus. What began like a father-son relationship, developed into a partnership to the point that Paul acknowledged Timothy as his co-author of 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon.