I answered the phone seventeen years ago and discovered that our older daughter Stacey was in no mood for pleasantries: “Mom, come over here and see if you think this test is positive.“

Stacey and her husband Steve had been married only four months and were going to think about having a baby after he graduated in two years and became established in a full-time youth ministry. They hadn’t been married long enough to know things don’t always go as planned.

I guess that’s why Tony and I found Steve sitting in the recliner and Stacey in the matching rocker staring at the floor in shock when we walked through the door to check the pregnancy test. Stacey took me over to her kitchen table where I looked down at the most obvious plus sign I had ever seen.

Tony and I couldn’t help but smile, and we’ve been smiling ever since. Even Stacey’s warning didn’t sober us. Pointing at us for emphasis, she said, “We’re not in this alone, you know.“

That was her way of sweetly inviting us in. Thus the era of grand parenting began.

No, my darling Stacey, you are not in this alone. Like so many other Christian grandparents, your father and I are pleased to do what God Himself exhorts us to do: “Do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children, and to their children after them” (Deut. 4:9).

I wrote a non-fiction book just over twenty years ago, called Framing a Rainbow, with the subtitle: Teaching your children they’re loved and teaching them to know and love God. If there’s anything we wanted our daughters to know it is these things.

Of course, the second part of that subtitle is too bold a claim for any book. But we thought we could help them at least glimpse their creator, sustainer, redeemer, and friend, and we believed that glimpse would draw them to him.

As mothers themselves now they’re dedicated to the same thing, believing as we did that showing their children how much they love them and teaching them what they know about God would equip them not only to cope with the world in which they live, but also to enjoy it, and even to bless it.

So, as grandparents, though we are not the primary care givers and responsibility is not as great, our goal is much the same. I can’t think of anything more important that loving our grandchildren and pointing them to the one who loves them most.

That is our two-fold job description, and I’ll elaborate on that description next week, and then in the weeks that follow tell you some of the ways we tried to accomplish the second of the two glorious “jobs.“