It's Father's Day today they tell me. And, I dread this day above all other days.
The last time I had a father was June 30, 1967. So, later this month it will be almost two score and ten years...to use Lincoln's way of describing the passage of time...a half century ago since I last saw my dad.
It was a beautiful late spring evening that Dad decided for whatever reason to take a little car ride out into the country around Delavan, Illinois...and whoosh like that...in an instant, he was gone. In a car accident caused by a drunk driver.
But, that's neither here nor there except to note that the lack of a father in my youth must have created within me a deficit of some type or another. Oh sure, I had father figures to look up to like my uncles on my mother's side and two wonderful grandfathers and the father of my good friend, Scott Witzig. Bert Witzig to be exact. Incidentally, Bert passed away recently, so, I know this is a really poignant day for the Witzigs.
But...nothing...like nothing...beats having a father at home on a daily basis. Mother...she tried mightly to replace my dad and after all these years I have concluded that she did her level best to be both mother and father. It was a huge responsibility...one that I later failed at.
I was not a competent father to say the least. For various and nefarious reasons I was not there for my children. Ironic isn't it? Because I grew up without a father I should have known how bad it would be for my children to grow up without a father. Unlike my hapless father...I chose not to be in my children's life...because of my selfishness, ego and the like.
And, as bad as that was, after all of these years...I have learned to accept that part of me and my history. I no longer flagellate myself over the past but have decided to look forward. I cannot go back and change my choices. They are what they are. But, know this. The consequences of bad choices will follow us around like a snarling black dog until the day they lower us beneath the weeds.
And, I think we all know that. Karma, they call it in the Eastern culture. Reaping what you sow they call it in the Christian culture.
Fortunately, God in Heaven, is a Father who loves us without condition, without fail, without demands or even expectation.
Look how he is characterized in the Parable of The Prodigal Son. This one of a kind vignette should really be entitled "The Prodigal Father" as the father spares no expense in his indulgence when his wayward son comes back home muttering something about sinning against him and Heaven. The prodigal father doesn't even respond to the son's faked attempts to appear repentant. We see the boy earlier in this masterful story rehearsing the story he was going to present to his father in the hopes he could manipulate his father to obtain a job, if nothing else, on the family farm.
Instead, we find the father, waiting every day out at the end of his driveway craning his neck out hoping against hope for his son's return...and then one day he sees his boy coming down the road and runs up to him and when he meets up with him...he grabs him around the neck and kisses him. And...he gives him a ring. And...he presents him with a new pair of shoes...all of which signifies the boy's proper place in the family as an honored son. The father then calls for the fatted calf to be prepared for a full blown soiree to be held to celebrate the return of a lost son.
Note that the father never went searching for his lost boy. Not at all. Why? I don't claim to know... but, I think the father knew that his boy was heading for a train wreck but had to let him go out into the real world and learn the hard way how bad the boy's choice was to take his inheritance and squander it on wine and women.
Remember Esau? He too squandered his inheritance for a simple bowl of porridge. Yet, although he sought to change his situation...even in tears...he could not for the inheritance had been given over to Jacob.There was nothing Esau could do after that. That was under the Old Covenant. The lost son's story, however, takes place under the New Covenant. God is about compassion, love and forgiveness.
We too can always return to the Father from squandering our estranged life in exile where we live east of Eden...so to speak...by deciding to change. To repent. Deciding to come back home...setting our eyes to the west...to the Shechina Glory of the Father. He will take you back...no matter how profligate you were, no matter how bad your choices were...no matter what. Unconditionally, and without any merit on your part.
I know that my love doesn't usually look that. I tend to love conditionally. In other words I love you IF you love me. That is my failure as a human being. That is me "missing the mark" at becoming a true human being. That is my sin.
That is NOT the way God wants it to be. We are to love our neighbor... even our enemy...with unconditional love and compassion. Yikes! I don't know about the rest of you, but, I struggle daily with loving even the people I would naturally love...let alone my neighbor and let alone my enemy!
As the Apostle Paul once said, " I do the things I don't want to do and don't do the things that I want to do. Oh, wretched man that I am!" Amen to that brother! Paul wasn't perfect and neither are we. So, let's struggle today as best we can and give it to God...because our Father in Heaven knows best.
Happy Father's Day to y'all!
BR Schoenbein
June 19, 2016- Sunday
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