I used to think 65 was super old. I would hear about someone
dying and think that anyone who died at that age, although it was not great, it
was okay...after all, they had lived most of their life and particularly the
‘good years’. Well, I used to think wrong.
My Dad was playing tennis when he got a ticket to heaven. He was playing
tennis because 65, though older than many, is not old. He had rediscovered his
passion for the sport and at 65 was playing it well. He was in good overall
health. He was leading our church passionately, with the energy of someone half
his age – though he did need naps to do it. J
Yet I cannot help but think he had so many more years of purpose left; purpose
in our lives and purpose in the Kingdom of God. I am just starting into what
God wants for me and now I do not have my pastor or my Dad to run ideas and
questions off of. I don’t have the advice giver in my life. I don’t have the
one who has struggled over theological issues for years and years to show me
the way to the final truth that rests in God alone. I will never again see that
look of pride he could not conceal when he heard me speak or teach or work with
the kids. He won’t come upstairs and kiss ‘his girls’ in the morning, just to
encourage us on our day. See? I’m crying like a baby. A baby looking for her
Dad. I do not know if I can bear to write this.
Yesterday morning the song “Good Father” came on the radio
and I broke down and from the depths of my being asking God, “If you are such a
good Father, why did you take my father away from me?” In the sweetest of
non-audible voices I heard the words, “Oh, Becky, maybe it was about him. I am
a good Father to him too.” I got the sense that God has made the best decision
for my Dad. My Dad was getting weary of all the demands of a senior pastor and
God knew that. He wanted so desperately more of the Holy Spirit’s presence and
power in his life. But he couldn’t have more of that in his present body, it
was too much. What his spirit wanted and what his body could handle were two
different things and they created in him a conflict of epic proportions. His
Father knew this. His Father looked on him with deep love and said, “Okay,
Dave, I’ll give you what you ask.” Now he is fully drenched in the Presence of
God and his heart is full. His love is complete. His worship is in complete
spirit and in complete truth. His
burdens are gone, his cares are lifted. It is all finished. It is all complete.
It is all good. He lived his life abandoned to his Creator and he got a grand
reward – a great reward for a life well lived.
But what about me? I am not alone. God will walk with me. He
keeps comforting me with all of the “Christian-eze” assurances I have heard my whole
life. Honestly, this irritates me a bit. I want there to be new answers, with
awe-striking thoughts, but they are not here. I want something new and different because I don’t
want to accept what ‘everyone else’ has accepted. I want to be different. But
that is just my flight instinct – RUN! But who would I turn to? Where would I
go? Who in all heaven and earth is like my God? I would find more loss and more
pain as I search and wander. The same things others have spouted for thousands of years
are all that come to me. I’m so glad God never changes. In a time of
uncertainty, my Father tells me the same thing He told me when times were good
and the same thing He told my father and his parents, and all the former
generations throughout the centuries. It is the same thing He told the
disciples. Because truth is truth and it cannot change, I will turn to the only
One who will never leave me or forsake me. I will turn to the only One who can
actually help me. And guess what? In my generation, holding on to something old
and true IS different.
