The Story

I want to tell you a story. 

This story is about a little boy named Kenneth Christ who was born in Round Lake, Minnesota, just three short years before the start of the Great Depression.  His mother intended to call him Ken, but his ornery father aimed to call him George, and the name stuck throughout his entire childhood.

This little boy grew up and left home and joined the Navy and got on a ship to see if he could lend a hand in solving a world war.  Upon returning home, he met a girl working in a department store and they began a love and a life that would go on for fifty-one years.

This is about a devoted husband and earnest worker who started out small as a salesman for Sather Cookie Company while supporting three young children.

And this is about a man whose tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit led his family to Kentucky in 1979 to start a grocery business, now with six children in all.

In this tale, the man wisely began training up his children in the early years of the business and surrounded himself with dedicated managers and loyal employees because he understood when President Ronald Reagan said, “Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.”

The story continues with a grandfather who took great delight and pride in a household of noisy grandkids; who would open up the backyard pool every June and invite the grands to come splash around, and in the colder months would sit in his favorite recliner and ask you to “Come over here and give Grandpa a hug.”

This is a story of thoughtfulness.  About fresh flowers on Grandma’s kitchen counter every week and about the simple pleasure of a fried chicken dinner from the deli at Ken’s split between husband and wife.

This story is about forgiveness.  Extending it.  Asking for it.  And encouraging others to do the same.  Because this man echoed Mahatma Gandhi when he said, “The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”

This story is one of faith.  A faith that grew more in his old age because he believed the Scripture that said, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former” (Haggai 2:9), until he was able to stand firm in his faith and invited others in his family to do the same. 

This tale is one of a gentleman who took a lady out dancing thirteen years ago and swept her off her feet.  It’s about new beginnings and fresh starts.

This story is about a person who re-defined retirement.  Who traveled, was out the door by eight o’clock every morning for a round of golf, finished crossword puzzles, organized family reunions, followed basketball.  Who attended the weddings of his grandchildren, bounced great-grandchildren on his knee, and still found time to visit his beloved grocery stores several times a week.

This story is about courage as the man’s body began to fail him.  It’s about bravery and determination to keep going to therapy, keep fighting from the hospital bed, keep working on putting one foot in front of the other so that late last fall he was even able to stand on a putting green and hit a few balls.

And finally, this story is about death on his own terms.  Without months away from home, without weeks of suffering, without days of waiting for the end to come, but rather in his sleep, peacefully, surrounded by his adoring family.

And yet as wonderful as this story is, I don’t believe it’s the end.  In fact, it may only be the beginning.  In the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia entitled “The Last Battle”, C.S. Lewis says this:

As Aslan spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.