Fathers and Sons

 “I just wish I could have told him in the living years.”

—Mike and the Mechanics

My father was a good father, and, in most respects, I was a dutiful son. But I allowed my father to starve for the one thing I could have given him: myself. He was a quiet man; I was equally silent. We often worked for hours side by side and scarcely a word passed between us. He never asked; I never told him my deepest desires and dreams, my hopes and fears.

In time I woke up to my reticence. Perhaps the perception came when my first-born came into the world, or when, one by one, my sons went out into the world. Now I wish I had been more of a son to my father while I was under his roof. I think of all the things I could have told him. And all the things he could have told me. At his funeral I stood beside his casket for the last time, struggling to understand my emotions. “It’s too late, isn’t it?” Carolyn said quietly. Exactly.

My comfort lies in the fact that I’ll be able to make things up in heaven, for is that not where every relationship will be set right? George MacDonald thought so: “What a disintegrated mass were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents, minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is there no help?” (Home Again: A Tale).

Death is not the end of affection, but the beginning of timeless existence in which there will be no more secrets and love will grow forever. Then, the hearts of sons will be turned to their fathers and the hearts of fathers to their sons. Then, we’ll pay attention to the things that matter most.

DHR

Three Questions

Leo Tolstoy tells a story about a king who believed that he would never fail at any enterprise if he had the answer to three questions: (1) What is the right time for any action? (2) Who are the people that matter? And, (3) in each situation, what is the most important thing to do?

None of the wise men of his kingdom could answer the king’s questions, so he disguised himself as a peasant and went out among his people to find the answers.

In his quest, he came across an old hermit who was digging in his garden. The King approached him and said: “I have come to you, wise hermit, to ask you to answer three questions: “What is the right time for any action? Who are the people that matter? And, in each situation, what is the most important thing to do?”

The hermit listened to the King, but answered nothing. He just spat on his hand and recommenced digging.

"You must be tired," said the King, "let me take the spade and work awhile for you."

While he was at work a man appeared who had been grievously wounded. The king bandaged his wounds only to discover that the man was an assassin sent to kill him, but, while the king was helping the hermit, the king’s men had discovered the plot and had wounded him. The would-be assassination asked the king for forgiveness which he freely granted.

Later, the king asked the hermit once again the answer to his questions

The hermit answered, “When that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business.

There you have it: What is the right time for any action? Now! This minute! Neither the past nor the future have any real existence; the present is the only time we have the power to act. Who is the person that matters? The one in front of us, for every person we meet in this world, if we only knew it, is fraught with deep and desperate need. And what is the most important action? To love that person by being good to him, “because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!” (Tolstoy).

What a marvelous simplification! — reminiscent of the conversation Jesus had with the lawyer about loving one’s neighbor and the young man’s self–justifying question, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply, our Lord told the story of the Good Samaritan, the point of which is:  The very next person you meet (Luke 10:27-29).

DHR

Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

Since Christ embrac’d the Crosse it selfe, dare I
His image, th’image of his Crosse deny?

—John Donne

John  Donne was thinking of the Puritans of his day and their refusal to “sign” the cross. But, he argues, we can not avoid the sign of the Cross; we see it everywhere:

    Swim, and at every stroke, thou art a Cross;
    The Mast and yard make one, where seas do toss;
    Look down, thou spiest out Crosses in small things;
    Look up thou seest birds rais’d on crossed wings;
    All the Globes frame, and spheres, is nothing else
    But the Meridians crossing Parallels…

All these “crucifixes” remind us of the Cross, but more notably,

    When that Crosse ungrudg’d, unto you sticks,
    Then are you to your self, a Crucifix.

In other words, we ourselves may become a “sign” of our Lord’s Cross that others will see!

Paul  says much the same: “(We are) always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.  So then death is working in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:10-12).

Daily, we’re “delivered over to death.”  I think of the parameters of old age: forgetfulness, failing eyesight, flaccid muscles, aching joints, impaired hearing, an unsteady gait and other strictures. These are the “little deaths” that accumulate until death is done with us. Despite the plethora of pills and potions we use to stave off the process as long as possible our “mortal flesh” is dying  and there’s nothing we can do about it!

But we can do  something about our attitude. We can embrace our dying—accept it “ungrudg’d” as Donne put it. This is what Paul means when he says, we “are always carrying in the body the dying of Jesus,” i.e., we have adopted the attitude that characterized Jesus. Our Lord accepted each diminishment in his life as His Father’s will and died to His own inclinations. That’s what it meant to him to take up his cross daily. The Cross on which he eventually died was merely the culmination of that  attitude.

Put simply, “carrying in the body the dying  of Jesus,” is offering up each “little death” to God as Jesus did and praying with Him, “Not my will but yours be done.” In that spirit we ourselves become a Crucifix.

Bitterness and resentment  over the aging process produce an unpleasantness that characterizes some folks in their final years. But a cheerful acceptance of each “little death” as it overtakes us releases the life of God within us and  a surfeit of goodness—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,  faithfulness, gentleness, and self-restraint. This is the life of Jesus  “made visible in our mortal flesh,” a life so irresistible that others are fascinated and drawn toward the One who is life indeed. Thus Paul’s ironic equation: “As death works in us, life works in you.”

May we then,

    Be covetous of Crosses, let none fall.
    Crosse no man else, but crosse thy selfe in all.”

DHR

A Long, Long Trail A–Winding

“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path (Psalm 142:3).

Sometimes the path seems impossibly steep and lengthy. I have no strength, no will for the journey. Then I remember that God knew this path long before I was called to walk it. He has always known the difficulties I will experience, the pain that I could never explain to another. He knows and offers his presence.

Perhaps you’re overwhelmed with sadness today. It may be the weight of a difficult ministry; the worry of a hard marriage; the sorrow of a struggling child; the care of an aging parent; the troubles that accompany your own aging. Surely, you say, God would not have me walk this way. There must be another, easier path for me to travel.

But are any of us wise enough to know that some other way would be better, some other lot more likely to make us into better and wiser children? No, our Father in heaven knows the best path, out of all possible paths, to bring us to completion.

His ways are higher than our ways; his thoughts higher than our thoughts. We cannot teach Him wisdom, or increase his fondness for us. We can but humbly bear his will and take the path he has marked out for us today, and do so in absolute trust in his infinite wisdom and love. (He is wiser and more loving than we can ever know.) He who sees, has foreseen and has not led

 us astray. 

DHR

 Scars

“She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful” (Luke 7:47, The Message).

A number of years ago I was hiking along the North Fork of the Salmon River here in Idaho and came across a grove of ponderosa pine trees that had been partially stripped of their bark. I knew from a friend, who is a forester, that the Nez Perce Indians, who hunted this area long ago, had peeled the outer bark from these trees and harvested the underlying cambium layer for food.  

Some of the scars were disfiguring, but other of the scars, filled with crystallized sap and burnished by wind and weather, had been transformed into patterns of rare beauty.

So it is with our transgressions. We may be scarred by the sins of the past, but those sins, repented of and brought to Jesus for his forgiveness, can be transformed, by his grace, into marks of extravagant beauty.

Those who have found themselves to be great sinners have learned the terrible consequences of sin: They have tasted its bitterness and now loathe it. They hate evil and love righteousness. Theirs is the beauty of holiness.

Furthermore, those who have fallen know they are part of the “all” that have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Knowing their sin, their hearts are tender toward others. They rise up with understanding, compassion and kindness when others fail. Theirs is the beauty of humility.

Finally, acts of sin—however outrageous—freely and thoroughly forgiven, lead to intimacy with and affection for the One who has shown mercy. Such sinners love much for much has been forgiven. Theirs is the beauty of love.

DHR

Eternally Young! 

“Deep inside this wrecked and ravaged hull there sails a young man still!”

Fredrick Buechner, Godric

A friend of mine was playing with his son one afternoon, and, lying flat on his back on the floor, pretended to fall asleep. The child climbed on his chest, leaned over his face and pried open one of his eyelids. “Hey, Dad,” he shouted. “Quit fooling around. I know you’re in there!”

The child understood something it took me more than seventy years to learn: I am not my body; I am merely “in there.”

The Bible makes it clear that we have bodies, but we not our bodies. We are our souls. (Genesis 2:7). The real “me,” the part that defines me and has eternal existence, is something other than my body. My body is mine, but it is not me (or I, as my old grammar teacher would insist.)

In the same sense, I have a vehicle, a fifteen–year–old GMC truck. It doesn’t go well these days—not as well as it used to go—and it takes a good deal of maintenance to make it go at all. I’m fond of the old truck; it takes where I’m going; and it is mine. But I would never confuse it with me.

The implications of this insight are enormous: I am not my failing eyesight, my aching knees, my stumbling gait, my quavering voice. These are attributes of the body I presently have that is growing older and older, faster and faster. (Thank God, I shall soon have a better one.) In the meantime, I am not growing old at all, for I am ageless and eternal. By faith, I have become a child of God. “And how, of all children, can the children of God grow old?” (George MacDonald).

DHR

Six Degrees of Separation

 “The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where…it is going” (John 3:8).

Eighty years ago a Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, wrote a short story entitled “Chain-Links,” in which he proposed the idea that any two individuals in the world are connected through, at most, five acquaintances. His theory has been revived with the expansion of the internet and recent social networking innovations—Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, et. al. His theory is known these days as “Six Degrees of Separation.” 

Picture an individual somewhere on earth, someone you know by reputation alone. According to Karinthy’s thesis, five friends link you to that person. You know Tom, who knows Jerry, who knows Susan, who knows Mary, who knows George, who knows that individual.

It’s impossible to validate the theory, but, properly understood, there may be something to it. Some years ago I received a letter from a man I’ve never met—one of the most prominent and influential men in the world—in which he told me that a brief note I had sent to a close friend several months before had found its way to his in-box and had encouraged him in a time of weariness and dark despair. I don’t know the length of the chain, but the friend to whom I sent the note sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend… Eventually my scribbling made its way to the man in question.  

It may be that you and I are indeed links in a chain that leads to every other person on the planet. This means that a simple word offered in love, guided by the wisdom of God, and borne aloft on the wings of the Spirit can have unintended but eternal consequences.

Should we not then fill ourselves full of God’s word and pass it on to others with the prayer that God will use it for his intended purposes? Who, but God, knows where that word will go!

DHR.