My paternal grandfather wasn’t well educated. He left school after fifth grade because he didn’t want to repeat it for the third time; and once he left, he had to make a living. The one thing he knew how to do was butcher a cow. So, he got a cow, butchered it, and took it to town to sell it. He got up the next day and did the same. That business grew until, by the time I came along, my dad, his brothers, and Granddad were slaughtering five to seven thousand head of cattle a week and putting them in semis and sending them everywhere. He wasn’t well educated, but he knew how to give a thousand men a full-time job.
Granddad had an amazing attitude toward the Bible. If I heard him say it once, I probably heard it a thousand times: “Life’s real simple. If the Bible says it, you do it.” That was it. “You don’t have to understand it, but if God said it, you do it.”
He also believed that we are to put others above ourselves. He called me in one day and said, “Davey, I have a job for you to do.”
“Sure, Grandpa. What can I do?”
“We got this farmer’s cattle too cheap.”
I looked at him and said, “No, no, we just got a sweet deal. We got a top bid at the auction. We didn’t do anything illegal.”
He shot back, “Son, I didn’t say we did anything illegal. I said we bought them too cheap. I have a duty before God to watch out for that farmer. And I have a duty to God not to do to him what I wouldn’t want him to do to me. Do you understand that, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you want him to buy your cattle too cheap?”
“Of course not, Grandpa.”
“Then don’t you ever do it to someone else. I put money in this envelope. Take it to the farmer and tell him we’re Christians, and we’re sorry, and we don’t do this.”
That farm was 300 miles away in Ohio, and it was in the dead of winter. By the time I reached that farm, it was nine o’clock at night, and snow was flying everywhere. I walked up onto the porch in the dark and knocked, and a lady peeped out from behind the curtains before she opened the door.
I told her, “Ma’am, my name is Dave Gibbs, and my grandpa sent me here tonight to apologize. We’re Christians, and we bought your cattle too cheap, and we don’t do that. We want to make it right, so here,” I said as I held out that envelope of money toward her.
She opened it and began crying, so hard that her nose started bleeding. By that time, her husband had walked to the door, and he’s hugging her as she says, “What kind of man does this?”
I’ll never forget her husband’s reply: “A Christian, Honey. A real one.”
My dad and granddad did a lot of cattle judging. They judged many large competitions like the Western National Livestock Show and others, but their passion was judging 4-H cattle, and they’d take me along. I couldn’t judge, but if those 4-H kids raised a steer, they had to sell it. I was there to buy those steers. So, Granddad would give me popcorn, peanuts, and a Coke and tell me, “Here’s what you do. Every steer that comes in, you start the bidding at two dollars a pound.”
You could have bought any of those animals for sixty or sixty-five cents a pound. A dollar a pound was high. Two dollars a pound was exorbitant! But I did just what he said. Every one that came in, I’d look at the auctioneer and say, “Two dollars.”
Pretty soon, people who wanted to buy those steers started asking, “Little Gibbs, what we gotta do to get you off that two bucks?”
“Ya gotta go talk to Granddad.”
They’d look disgusted and say, “That won’t do no good. He’s doing what he thinks the Bible says to do. That’s just not gonna do any good.”
When we bought those steers, we gave every one of those kids a Gospel tract and offered to pick them up, no matter where they lived, and take them to church. And I just sat there saying, “Two dollars a pound.”
On the way home one day, I said from the back seat, “Grandpa, we spent a bunch of money today we didn’t have to spend.”
He stopped that car right on the highway, turned around, and said, “Son, don’t you ever forget this. Number one, it wasn’t your money. Number two, it wasn’t my money. It was God’s money, and we made the Lord look good today. Don’t you ever say we spent what we didn’t have to when we made the Lord look good.”
“31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise….36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful….38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” (Luke 6:31, 36, 38)
Are we the real deal, or has the world so conformed us that we are just out for ourselves? Do we make the Lord look good in the way we deal with others?
I made similar trips more than once carrying money for sellers, and so did others who worked for my grandfather. When Grandpa passed away, the viewing was scheduled for noon to eight at night, then the funeral was to be the next morning. They had to postpone the funeral for two and a half days because thousands of farmers showed up in Ohio from Texas, Montana, Illinois, Michigan… in fact, from all over the U.S. During those two-and-a-half days, I stood and listened as person after person said, “Let me tell you what you don’t know about your granddad.”
At the end of the trail, what will people say about you?
The lady from my first trip came and hugged my neck as she said, “Little Gibbs, be like your granddad. There’s not too many of them. Be real.”
Christians, we have forgotten what we are commanded to do. Are we making the Lord look good today?