God Is Reliable: A Small Storefront to God's Storehouse of Blessings

By Ken Vos

Some think that a life of faith means a life of dullness. This book will completely dispel you of that notion. These pages contain stories and adventures that make it hard to put down. And when you put it down, you'll shake your head and say, God is reliable. —Reverend Daniel N. Gillett Faith, family, dedication, commitment—if these words are as important to you as they are to the author, then this book will be an inspiring "read" for you. Here's a story and testimony that sings of the power that comes from "a peace that passes all understanding." —Mayor Al McGeehan Holland, Michigan

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684564651

Book preview

God is reliable.

1932: The Adventure Begins

Like a sudden flash of light,

a new insight,

almost like to prophets of old,

it came to me.

My shop is called Reliable Sport and Ski Huas.

My shop and my God,

both reliable.

That I lived through such a sequence of seemingly

inconsequential events in my life

without realizing this comforting experience

was no small miracle!

But was the path of my life really insignificant,

irrelevant to the continuation of a path, a plan,

God had been forging for me all the time?

Was it truly God on high

speaking to me,

gripping me in a strange way,

in a way I really didn’t even understand?

In my attempt to internalize what I felt,

I was so moved;

my eyes welled with tears.

The astonishing discovery of a new insight,

in a sense,

opened for me

an avenue to the identity of God,

the multifaceted face of God.

I had never before been so keenly aware of God.

In that instant I knew I had to tell my story.

I could not keep it a secret.

It was like the reawakening of my heart to the

realization of how the

sacred and the mundane,

God and Reliable Sport and Ski Haus,

blended in my life in reality to make me a

whole person.

There was no mistaking the connection between the

holiness of God and the

everyday events in my life.

I experienced a holy shudder of awe.

With the vividness of this realization,

I am compelled to tell my story.

I must tell it!

To Adequately Put My Story into Perspective

World War I Memorial Day Parade

Grandpa Cap minus his cap!

To begin,

it is necessary to recall some history of my

parents and grandparents,

for, surely,

what they were is part of what I have become.

Because of their

talents,

skills, and

business acumen,

their strengths,

their weaknesses,

their joys,

their sorrows, and

their faith in God,

I have undoubtedly inherited some of those tendencies of

expertise and

competence,

which I practice in my business today.

In actuality then, my story must begin before I was born.

What do you call a man who

never gives up to his dying day?

That man was my dad, Edward Vos.

He was an amazing,

tenacious,

ambitious man,

who lived every minute to fulfill his dream.

Born April 17, 1918,

Dad was the son of an electrician,

Arie Vos, nicknamed Cap

(because he was rarely seen without a cap), and

married to my dear grandmother, Teanetta (Tillie).

They lived in a quiet residential area in a modest home at

136 West Nineteenth Street in Holland, Michigan.

Grandfather Cap had an interesting

two-level shop in their backyard.

Work areas were a main-floor back room and

a basement, with

an attractive front to the building with

big glass windows used for showroom purposes.

Grandfather Cap installed and maintained

the first street lights in Holland.

His partner was Joe Roerink.

Before electricity, he was in charge of the

gas lanterns all over town.

Grandfather had a good reputation and was a reliable guy.

Grandmother was a good business woman.

They made a good team.

Over time my Grandfather Cap began associating with men

who enjoyed alcohol a little too much.

By the time my dad was nine years old,

Grandma was no longer able to live with the

habits that went along with drunkenness.

Cap (though he tried for years) was

unable to control his drinking problem.

Sadly, Cap was an alcoholic.

A divorce resulted,

leaving my grandmother Teanetta with

four young children to rear by herself.

My father, Edward, the eldest,

already at age eleven,

felt a joint responsibility with his mother

to care for his younger siblings.

It was an enormous burden to be a breadwinner

at such a young age.

There was Vern, age nine,

Ruth, age seven, and

Gene, only five.

Dad remembers an especially difficult time when,

basically, all they ate for two entire winters were

potatoes.

Grandfather’s brothers and sisters helped now and then,

especially on holidays, but

nobody had much to share in those

difficult times.

The very painful part of my history,

orally related to me by relatives, was that

in the Depression years, when money was scarce,

my grandfather did not meet his obligations

in paying child support,

so he was put into prison in Jackson, Michigan.

After the divorce,

Grandfather Cap remarried, but

died of a heart attack at the age of forty-five.

There was no place to have the funeral,

so it was held in my dad’s house,

with his body lying in their living room.

Grandma Teanetta also remarried.

In 1939, the same year my dad got married,

Grandma was swept off her feet by a man named

John Martin.

He was a really sharp dresser and

set himself up as a man of means,

borrowing nice cars to take her for rides.

Grandma fell head over heels in love, and

before she knew all the facts,

she married John.

It turned out to be a traumatic decision for her.

John brought her home for the first time

to a farmhouse in Lansing, Michigan.

She learned he had a passel of children without a mother,

and he had elderly parents who required constant care.

John had little money and

no modern appliances whatsoever.

He had greatly deceived her,

but she realized her motives

were not completely pure either.

She was hoping her life would improve with John,

but it was not to be.

Grandma rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

She scrubbed the farmhouse until it was spotless.

She hated dirt.

She cooked up huge pots of good healthy food.

Gradually she whipped that poor, pathetic mess into shape!

Grandma did laundry for days at a time

on an old wringer washer

that sat right outdoors,

heating the water on an old woodstove

and then pouring it into the tub.

The children and the elderly parents helped her

hang the clothes out to dry.

When Grandma was about forty-five,

she began growing huge bunions on her feet, and

her jaw began jutting out.

Every area of her body started changing drastically,

not for the better…

She had been a very pretty woman,

but