Following her death in 2007, Ruth Graham’s children shared memories of their mother with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Today we are sharing reflections from Billy and Ruth’s daughter Ruth, known to her family as Bunny.

Everyday Faith
Faith was the very heartbeat of life at Little Piney Cove. We began and ended each day as a family on our knees in prayer. One of my earliest memories is of kneeling down beside the fireplace at our first home—called the Old House—and fiddling with a loose brick on the hearth during family devotions.

We constantly received reports about my father’s evangelistic meetings; and when we were young, Mother would set up a globe in the kitchen and show us where Daddy was preaching at any given time. Every Sunday afternoon at 3 o’clock we gathered around the radio in the living room to listen to my father’s weekly broadcast, The Hour of Decision. But while my father, due to his demanding schedule, lived out faith for us largely from afar—and he loved us very dearly—Mother lived out her faith in front of us day in and day out. She was more often our primary example.

Mother’s was a practical, everyday faith. Her faith touched all that she did, but not in an ostentatious kind of way. Mother expressed her faith and her love of God through the common activities of life. Her conversation, for example, was suffused with talk of what God was teaching her. We constantly overheard her discussing the Scriptures with adults or sharing stories of people she knew whose lives had been changed by God through Christ. Her countenance softened—and it still does—when she talked about God.
—Ruth Graham, Ruth’s daughter