June 4, 2005

• God……..Our Father

  
  

  Whew! What a day! I started this new book today by Donald Miller called, “Blue Like Jazz (Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)”. I really enjoy Donald’s style. Listen to this short paragraph on page 4:

  
  

  “Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as “Father” at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake. Why would God want to call Himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children?”

  
  

  I was blessed with a wonderful mother, but my father, well, he loved but, but he was to busy in business for me and we were semi estranged most of my adult life. In my early childhood he was a railroad man, those were great years, but when I was about five he became an executive and it wasn’t until after I was in the Gulf War that he ever even visited my home (at that time I was 35 years old with two children). So, I didn’t have a great “father figure”. However, my driving desire in life has always been to raise my children in a loving and nurturing environment. My wife, Kelly, and I have raised our children from day-one using the Bible method. We raised our children to prepare them to leave our home when they are ready and to be responsible and loving. We have been blessed.

  
  

  Anyway, back to the God as Father thing. I see how easy it is to see God as Father because of my relationship with my children. But not everyone has that experience. I recently spoke to a friend of mine who came to me upon losing his dog for comfort. He was visibly upset and shaken and hurting deeply. We sat out in the JamminStation (my studio) talking, and he confided in me that he had often had a hard time understanding the concept of “unconditional love” because his father had never treated him that way. But, he said, that this day he began to truly understand it because of the unconditional love that his dog had for him and he for his dog. His dog had died of old age after many wonderful years in the family. He fought back tears, but they fell, we talked and we prayed. I could not help but think that God put dogs on this earth for a reason. Come home…they can’t wait to see you…..sit down….they want to be near you……lay down…they want to snuggle…go out… they want go also. What a wonderful example of unconditional love. Then it struck me…….dog spelled backward is God….hmm……who named these wonderful creatures?

  
  

  Though most of my life was distant from my father, I always had a love for him and I did have some good memories. In 1996 my father was terminally ill, a heavy smoker and an alcoholic who had been abandonded by my stepmother, the woman he truly loved in his lifetime. My sister and I talked him into flying from Florida to Colorado to live with me and my family. He told me that at this time in his life, all the people that he expected to be there for him (my stepmother and her children) were now gone, and those that he had treated badly and distantly, (my mother, me, my sister and my brother), were the ones that were there for him. This attest to the ties of unconditional love that bind us through Christ love for us. My father lived 5 more months. Those were the absolute very best months of my life as we got to know each other, laughed and joked and really lived life together. He was also agnostic most of his adult life, and at this time realized that he was wrong about God. When he died, he came back tyo the Lord. At that time I was still wandering a little aimlessly in  my spiritual life but was concerned about his salvation. What would follow was truly amazing, what followed was a voice that could only be from God.

  
  

  After his passing and after the funeral, one day as our family was traveling home in Colorado Springs, we were driving toward the mountains as the sun was going down. A long, winding freight train was going down the track in fron of the sun. My oldest daughter, then just 11, startled us, and told us to look ahead at the sun. There before us, as the train was crossing the horizon and the sun was going down, was a perfect cross, a glint in the sun, not an “X” or a star, but a perfect cross. We all immedietly made the connection that “Papaw” (as my children called their gradfather) was with God. I immedietly knew that my father was with “the Father” and my fears were washed away. God talked to us that day. My children still talk about it. We watched that cross in the sun the whole way home for miles and miles.

  
  

  I know that this was a little rambling, but reading the first pages of this book brought back a flood of memories. Something else about that unconditional love……my father was semi estranged from his real family most of our lives……..but the memories that stand out the most are the good ones. Is it that way with The Father? Does he love us so much, so unconditionally, that His arms and heart are always open to us, despite all those times that we were “estranged”? Yes….I think so….in fact……YES….I KNOW SO!

  • 12:25 am
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