On Monday, October 6th, I returned from my trip to my mother’s home town of Kansas City, Kansas. The trip was to celebrate the 90th birthday of my grandfather, Reverend Russell W. Davis Sr, a man who has been a faithful servant of the Lord for 80 years of his life. Below are the words of tribute that I delivered during the Sunday afternoon service at the church that he founded in 1971, Christ’s Church of the Jesus Hour.
My earliest memories are of traveling to Kansa with my family to visit grandma and grandpa. This was exciting because it would mean a long cross-country journey by car, but at the end I would see the family that I was not fortunate enough to see everyday back at home (in NYC). As a child, grandpa was just grandpa. I mean, I knew he was, as my cousin Tyke once said “a preacher man”, but what does that mean to a child? To me it meant, here was this wise man, a father who had–with his wife by his side–raised his children in Christ. My grandfather, the Reverend Russell W. Davis, has been a faithful servant on the Lord’s team for 80 years. Not eith hours, eight days, or eight years, but eight decades. Today, Grandpa has reached the 90th anniversary of his birth. I’m not the best with math, but I’m pretty certain that he’s been serving the lord for almost 90% of his life. Now I’m just about 35 years old and there have been plenty of times that I have walked and stumbled and gotten up again. Grandpa has remained the same in his steadfast love and service of the Lord. He has shown me how to live in the world and not be of the world. Through his faithful service of the Lord, he has been the type of father that all men should strive to be. My children will be raised in Christ because that is what has been passed to me from Grandpa to my parents and now together with my wife. I am thankful that I learned to love the Lord through the consistent teachings of his faithful servant, my grandpa, Reverend Russell W. Davis, Sr.
