The year was 1862 and the Civil War was tearing our young nation apart. Abraham Lincoln was the newly elected president, and his Army of the Potomac was losing one battle after another to General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army.1 It was a troubled time for a country that had begun with such promise.
On November 15 of that year, a baby boy was born to the McCluskey family in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and they named him George Washington in honor of the Father of our Country. Mr. and Mrs. McCluskey were devout Christians and their son was raised in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.”
George grew up and married Alice Turnell on November 14, 1886. They lived happily together for forty-nine years. He died at seventy-two years of age. Alice lived to be ninety-eight. They were to become my great-grandparents. He was a farmer on the plains of Texas for many years until an itinerant minister came to their town. George went to hear him preach and had a dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ. In days to come, he felt a definite “call” to the ministry and spent the rest of his life working as an evangelist and a pastor for numerous churches. “Winning people to Christ” was his greatest passion. He was about six feet five inches tall, about the same height as Abraham Lincoln.
G. W. McCluskey died on November 14, 1935. His granddaughter became my mother, and she was two months pregnant with me when her grandpa died. I regret that I never had an opportunity to meet this good man. As you will soon understand, I owe him so much!
Alice, who I knew as Nanny, helped to raise me. One of my earliest memories was lying in a bassinet and looking up at the woman who smiled down upon me. She wore a knitted cap that had fuzzy balls dangling from yarn. Though it might be difficult to believe, I have vague memories of reaching up from my tiny crib and grasping the balls. I couldn’t have been more than fifteen months old. That introduction to Nanny was one of my earliest glimmers of self-awareness, and from it came the beginnings of my love for my great-grandmother. An even earlier memory was of being held in someone’s arms, perhaps it was Nanny, who was feeding me something that smelled like the baby food known then as Pabulum. I still recall how it tasted. (Not very good.)
In years that followed, Nanny talked often to me about her life with George. She never called him by his first name, of course. He was always referred to as “my husband,” or “your great-grandfather.” Nanny told me fascinating stories about their life in a cabin on the frontier and how “panthers” (mountain lions) would prowl around at night trying to kill their squealing pigs. My eyes must have been as big as saucers as the imagery of those big cats became real.
Nanny also told me about the prayer life of her husband. For the last several decades of his life, this patriarch of the family prayed specifically for the spiritual welfare of his children and for those yet to come. He devoted the hour from 11 a.m. to 12 noon every day for this purpose. Toward the end of his life, he said the Lord had made a very unusual promise to him. Reverend McCluskey had been assured that every member of four generations of his family would be Christians. We’ll see how that prophecy manifested itself through the next eighty years and continues to this day.
What an incredible heritage has been handed down to our family. It is remarkable to think that a man in his seventies, whom I would not know until we get to heaven, was on his knees talking to God about his progeny. Now my great-grandfather’s prayers reach across four generations of time and influence our lives today.
In 2012, my son and daughter, Ryan and Danae, went with me to find the McCluskey gravesite for the first time. We located it in Placid, Texas, an hour’s drive from Austin. There are only thirty-two people living in Placid today, most of them elderly. There are no stores or businesses remaining in that place. An old brick schoolhouse still stands where children once learned, laughed, and played. It is decrepit and boarded up now. A small ramshackle general store has survived but is locked up tight. This is where people once bought groceries and played dominoes in the distant past. A rusted Conoco gasoline pump leans out front. We worked our way around to the other side of what used to be a town and found an abandoned cemetery. Eighteen members of the McCluskey family are buried there. Among them are the graves of my great-grandfather, George, and his wife, Alice (Nanny). His tombstone is inscribed with the words, “George W. McCluskey. He died as he lived—a Christian.” What an understatement!
We knelt there at the gravesite and each of us prayed because it seemed like holy ground. Each of us thanked the Lord for the influence of these godly ancestors and for the prayers of my great-grandfather. As Danae was praying, a beautiful rainbow appeared above us. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she spoke from her heart. A caretaker told us it is rare to see such a breathtaking scene in that dry hill country. Ryan was the last to pray, and he thanked the Lord for the four generations of our family who have lived for Jesus Christ, each in their time. Ryan said that George McCluskey would have wanted to know that he and Danae are also serving Christ, and as such, are members of the fifth generation. Ryan and his wife, Laura, are teaching their two children to love Jesus, too. They will soon take their places as representatives of the sixth. How powerful are the prayers of a man whose petitions have reached his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and great-great-great-grandchildren. We are all beneficiaries of his devotion.
Hebrews 12:1 tells us “we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” I’ve always wondered who is in that cloud. Are they the patriarchs of the Bible or the other saints who have gone before, or perhaps angels who are looking down on us? I don’t know. I’ll leave it to the theologians to interpret for us. But I’d like to think the McCluskeys are watching from above. Regardless, there’s one thing I know. We will see them again.
Have you thought about the legacy you want to leave to your children and generations to come? That is a question every Christian parent should consider. The implications of it are breathtaking. If the objective of living is to pass on a heritage of faith to those you love and to be with them throughout eternity, I suggest that you be intentional about preparing for it now.
That is what I want to share with you in the pages to follow.