Meet Nancy A Woman Who Stayed The Course

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking that its time I started writing the blog again. So here goes with my first post leading up to Christmas.
On Wednesday I attended the funeral of Nancy Crawford. Nancy was my wife’s mother’s eldest sister. She died  last week aged ninety-nine.  If only she could have made  her one-hundredth birthday!
I want to write a story about Nancy to encourage all of us to take seriously the promptings of God in our lives, especially when we feel constrained to speak of our faith.  In some ways this post is  also about another person, Rev  A. Grant -Gibb, a minister who shared his faith with a factory girl and in doing so changed her life and the lives of three generations.  
When Nancy was a young sixteen year old girl, she was returning from her work often she would walk the five miles home. By good fortune this particular day she was able to use the train. As she left the train station a fellow traveller looking rather lost stopped her and asked for directions to the Baptist Church Manse. 

Nancy not only directed Mr  Grant-Gibb to the manse she actually took him to the manse. As they walked no doubt they talked about many things, including the fact that the minister was a guest preacher at the Baptist Church. When they arrived at their destination, before Nancy left, the minister asked her a question. “Nancy”, he said, “ Would you like to become a Christian? ”  To which Nancy replied,  with a  simple, “ Yes.” A few days later she received a letter in the post  from the passing stranger, with a little booklet entitled, ‘Daily Light’. What I found most moving was that the elder conducting her funeral service, held up the little book. Nancy had kept it for eighty- three years. Over all these years she had been faithful in reading her Bible  a book that had transformed her whole life. Sitting in front of me were rows of people who had been influenced by this quiet, thoughtful but determined woman and a stranger whom they had never met.

It turns out that Mr Grant-Gibb used to pray every day the same prayer, “ Lord lead me to someone to whom you wish me to share my faith.” None of us will ever know the value or the significance of the casual chat, but also perhaps more of us should be willing to ask the question, “Have you ever thought about following Jesus.

2 Comments
avatar

Posted By: Alison Baird   On: 19 Dec 2014   At: 7:16pm

Honoured to be part of one of the generations you mentioned above. Thank you so much for your kind words, and lovely prayer at my Gran’s funeral. I feel truly blessed to have had her in my life for 32 years,  and very thankful she was able to be a part of my children’s lives too.  Thanks again.

avatar

Posted By: hazeymcc   On: 19 Dec 2014   At: 6:00pm

Nancy sounds a lovely and amazing wee soul and thank you for blogging again- we all missed your words of wisdom and cheer

Leave a reply