It takes time to gain the mature hope grandparents have.

Mature hope sees that we can help a new generation gain the human and spiritual skills to build something new, strong, and holy—something that will last, something that will be there to support generations to come. It takes a long-term view to plant a forest, build a new culture, or even reroof Notre Dame Cathedral.

During the fifteen years I lived in Europe, I toured many of the great cathedrals. I was struck over and over again by their majesty. These monuments to the glory of God took centuries to build and still inspire awe today. How did our ancestors do it? Building a wall, a support pillar, or a roof was not easy without modern tools. It took patience and sweat. The detail we can still see in a piece of stone that was carved six hundred years ago is amazing. Some mason spent hours carving the curly wool on the ear of a stone sheep. A slip of the hand or a faulty piece of stone and a week’s worth of work could be easily lost, but these people were dedicated to the idea that their labor of love would serve future generations. They stayed on task.

The Long Game. The founding fathers of these cathedrals rallied the whole community to a vision that would need buy-in from multiple generations. The first years were spent simply laying the floor and foundations. The fathers taught their sons, and the mothers taught their daughters what to do. Eventually, as “grand-founders,” many taught their grandsons and granddaughters the skills they needed. The hand-carved woodwork, the hand-painted art, and the hand-blown glass we see today are still beautiful, and the hands that created them were often trained by the wisest and most skilled—the grandparents.

A few of the grand-founders might have lived long enough to become great-grand-founders. Even then, they never lived to see the cathedral finished. They didn’t need to. They had hope. The “grand”-aged people have always been a sturdy foundation upon which the future rested.

The same is true of the family today. We began a work in raising one generation as parents, and now we have the opportunity to pass on faith, skill, and virtue to our grandchildren. We are not building with brick and mortar. We are building with living stones and making saints for the kingdom of God.

Grandparents and grandchildren are the two arms of a “building” strategy. Grandparents have hope, and their grandchildren are the incarnation of that hope. They will be the foundations of future good things. Grandparents build anew when they see this truth and act with hope—not with the sweat of their brows or the strength of their backs, but with the power of the long-term view, a deep hope. They understand that what they do in their old age may be more fruitful than many things they did when they were young and vigorous. They are older and wiser. They know what fails and what succeeds better than they did when they were thirty-five. What you give to your grandchildren now might take sixty years to mature, but that’s OK.

Who knows what our grandchildren will do or be in this life for God’s glory? We may never see those results in our lifetime. We certainly will be tempted to think our contribution is small and doesn’t matter, but when we give what we can with love, it does make a difference. Building the kingdom of God is a multigenerational task. It was the same with the great cathedrals. We must do what we can, and let God use that for his purposes, trusting we will see the results someday from above the clouds.

A Dangerous Freedom. God runs the universe differently than I would: he gives us freedom right out of the womb. I wouldn’t! If it were up to me, I would rig the system. I would make people choose what I deemed good, and I would not give them any choice about it until they were at least twenty-six. Consider how many bad choices could be avoided with my approach.

But God gives us a fearful level of freedom. He allows us to shape our temporal and eternal destiny, and, in doing so, he dignifies us greatly. He has not given such dignity to anything else on earth.

I watched a young girl with a delightful personality, from a good family, grow up over the past fifteen years. I went to her Confirmation, saw her respond on retreats, witnessed her serve in her youth group, and then saw her hook up with the wrong young man and become an unwed mother at eighteen. She had no money, no job, and no high school diploma. It was heartbreaking for her parents, but the story isn’t finished yet. Here is what she wrote about her current reality and posted on our website for grandparents:

I am a young mom. When I was eighteen, I gave birth to my son, Mark. I was unmarried and unequipped to manage my own life, let alone a child’s. At the same time, I was suddenly confronted with the overwhelming privilege of motherhood and greatly desired to raise my son well. I spent much of the next five years living with my parents. They walked side-by-side with me in raising Mark. In order to live with them, my parents required me to go to church. It wasn’t what I would have chosen, but it was part of the package.

Needless to say, “Grandma” had not planned on this chapter in her life either. However, she embraced this time and the opportunity to share her faith with her grandson. She taught Mark to say prayers and pay attention in church. Now, at age five, he takes the initiative in saying grace before meals. She signed him up for religious education and paid for his classes. Mark loves it! He comes home and tells me what he’s learned and retells the Bible stories.

My mother’s biggest impact on Mark has come from talking about her own faith. “Do you know how much we love you? Do you know how much God loves you? He loves you so much he has put all these wonderful people in your life to love you!”

My mother and Mark seem to have developed a common “lost and found” bond! Whenever she loses something, she prays aloud for help. If Mark loses something, she asks, “Did you pray?” Now, when Mark loses something, he prays, and when he finds it, he says, “Thank you, Jesus!”

Why am I writing this story for grandparents? My mother, Mark’s grandmother, was one of the first people impacted by Grandly, The Strategic Grandparents Club. Its message of hope and the idea that she could be entering one of the most important times of her life for sharing her faith struck her as true, and she acted on it in Mark’s life, but that’s her story.

As for me, my story is still developing, but it certainly, already, has a theme in it for grandparents: Don’t give up hope on your stumbling children. We might be stumbling over the rock of our salvation.

This young woman’s story is not uncommon today, but notice—the challenging situation itself is becoming her path back home to faith. That gives me hope.

God, being good, doesn’t offer us just one shot at eternal life. He quietly works (often through other human beings) to help us choose whether we want to be with him for all eternity or not. So we should never give up hope. God has more options than we can imagine for winning the fight for our grandchildren.