Did Dad ever want to wring the son’s neck? Ever?

Where was Mom in all this?

What happened six weeks or six months later?

Did the kid suffer a relapse?

Questions.

So…let’s pretend.

Imagine if Father’s Day fell a week following the prodigal son’s return. No, check that. Let’s pretend it occurred about six or seven months later. On that morning, the father—let’s call him Chanan (Hebrew for gracious)—awakens from a dreamless sleep and rubs his eyes so as to roust them from their hours of inertia. It is still dark, but an oil lamp casts a coppery glow inside the master’s bedroom, and he looks at the pleasing, sleeping form of his wife—oh, may as well: Chana. Hannah. Grace.

She stirs slightly and for a moment he only wishes to look at her, not interrupt her slumber, and when her breathing again falls to a soft purr, he smiles. Ah, Chana! How gracious our Yahweh is! The woman I adore is the woman I awaken to each morning…

He persists in this reverie for a few more holy moments before something draws his eyes past her to the tapestried fold in the door. Just over the delicate slope of Chana’s hip he sees the corner of a small parchment partially slid beneath the curtain. His brow plunges in puzzlement so he quietly rises from the bed and pads over to the door and stoops to retrieve the paper.

As he carefully slides it to himself, he notices a familiar hand has addressed it: “Gracious Father.” A note from Habib (dearly loved). His youngest. Chanan’s eyes mist as he remembers the long nights spent in this very room praying for Habib’s return, crying out to G-d with Chana that He would keep their boy from peril and destruction. The years were long and their inner woundings great, but Elohim proved powerful as always and His providential blessing brought palatial healing and restoration.

Chanan’s eyes welled and spilled over, mirroring his heart’s release. Habib. The little lamb that was lost. Now home. Their lamb once again. The moment was only spoiled by the jealousy of Aaron (lofty, exalted one) who, even to this day sulks and harbors inner hatred. He has gone to his own far country. Chanan sighed and petitioned for Aaron’s “return” once more…

Old, gnarled fingers lifted the parchment to his heart as Chanan walked nearer to the light source for better reading. He sat by the table and unfolded the document. Chana lightly breathed from the bed behind. Outside he could hear some of the animals coming to life and those who tended to them. Dawn was moments away.

Gracious Father,

It was your love that found me where I was—that despicable, hellish place—and with tender bands to my wrists and ankles, you pulled me home. I am a slave to your love and forever choose to remain in your care. I will spend the rest of my life in awe of such grace that never gave up on me, searched for me, located me and has made a home for me. And I will let such grace run its full course in me until I, too, become this grace to others. You and Mother are everything I never knew I wanted, but now that my eyes have been opened, I want naught else.

I thank Eternal G-d that I was delivered from the pit, but I also consider the far country a closed chapter in my book. I know it will come as no surprise to you, Father, but since my return, I have entertained thoughts of going back, but they were only thoughts, praise Yahweh, never actions! Today I declare I could never go back to where I was, for the beauty of where I am is so alluring and permanent.

But, Abba, I also want you to know that I am not only delivered from the pit and done with the far country, but I am determined to choose life always. You never let me finish my little speech back there on the hillside where I fell at your feet. I know now it was grace that stopped me short that day; your grace that finished my best intentions. But you must know, Papa, on this Father’s Day, since you gave me life, to quote beloved David: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in your house than to dwell in tents of wickedness.” I know he was singing about the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but I feel the need to declare my intent to serve you, Father, by living out all of my days as your son. This is my promise: your name, your values and your heart will be perpetuated through my life. With you is life. With you always I will remain.

This is the best way I know to thank you, Father. And to honor you. These are not mere words. Watch me. You will not be disappointed.

Happy Father’s Day.

Yeah, that’d be a pretty cool card. Parents of prodigals would die smiling if this scenario ever became their own.

But in the larger story: do you see yourself anywhere in this narrative?

My Dad can beat up your Dad.

Today is Father’s Day and I am reflecting on my one true example of fatherhood and, I can tell you, he’s got your Dad beat by a mile. Okay, so he only took me to White Sox games in the 60′s when they were awful instead of Cubs games as I was growing up on the south side of Chicago. And I never remember them winning. Not once. But I complained long enough that he took me to the north side one time to visit Wrigley Field when Fergie Jenkins was pitching.

And yes, the Cubbies won. 4-2. See? It made an impact on me. Dad did that.

Sure, it’s true that he worked for the phone company and they kept transferring him in the middle of the school year, making it hard to make new friends and easier as time went by to say bye to old friends. So what if I learned over time not to get too close to people. I did, in fact, learn to make friends quickly and my penchant for cave-dwelling has turned me on to spending long hours shut away with God (a ‘plus’ in ministry) and learning though other friends may come and go, He will never leave me nor forsake me.

Yeah, my stinking memory still holds onto the ONE time he looked so disappointed in me after a little league game where I had muffed a pop fly and caused us to lose a big game, amid all the other times he praised me in all things big and small and taught me the art of encouragement. Sorry, Dad. I did get over that a long time ago, and the fact of the matter is, I was kind of a goof at baseball. Thanks for all those years of leaving work early to pick me up from basketball practice and for rarely missing any of my games. You rock.

I say again, my Dad can beat up your Dad.

He’s a study in meekness and gentleness. He’s one of the kindest men you will ever meet. Many have been the times I’ve heard it said of my Dad that “he’s so cute.” Yeah, he kinda is. He’s just a short man but he stands head and shoulders above most. He’s also the youngest looking 81 year old you’ll ever know. And he doesn’t drive like an old man, which is always nice. ‘Tis true he has more hair than I do and in MUCH better shape but the one thing about my Dad that I can honestly say I have never known him to do is make fun of anyone. You won’t hear put-downs from his mouth. He builds up. He doesn’t tear down. And I have never, ever felt degraded by him.

Thanks, Dad. You rock.

And another thing. This man I am talking about? This man who is my Dad? Well sir, I’ve never seen a man love a woman like he loved my Mom. Throughout their almost fifty years together, right up to her passing from a three-month battle with cancer, he put her first every time. Not before God, mind you, but her needs always came before his own. The man’s a saint, I tell you.

There’s a whole litany of things I could say to honor my Dad but all of them would fall way short of the one thing that has stood out in my memory above all others. Growing up in my house, you always knew where Dad would be before the sun rose on his day: at the breakfast table with an open Bible and bowed head. His life has always been a worship to His Lord. And because of his devotion, his life has the mark of integrity on it. Before there was PromiseKeepers, he was the mold for what a promise-keeper should look like. I never knew him to leer at another woman or cheat God with the tithe or shirk his work responsibilities. They don’t make ‘em like Dad anymore.

My Dad can beat the tar out of yours.

Dad was a great provider, a committed husband, a kind father and he showed me it’s never out of place for a grown man to cry, indeed it is quite masculine—all these things, yes, but there will never be a more bold statement over his life than that sweet head bowed in a fixed amen to the Holy Book that shapes every moment of his life.

All which has me asking: How?

He didn’t grow up in a Christian home. He never received much in the way of love from his Dad or stepmom, and yet he filled my sisters’ and my life with it in abundance. Man, it just leaves me shaking my head. Here’s to you, Dad, with love. Thank you for being Jesus to me with skin on.

Sylvester Stallone still has one more Rocky to write: YOU are the Rocky Balboa of Dads.

Where ya been?

The keyword of my life lately has been ‘connect’.  That, and the woeful lack thereof, as the case may be.  As you are well aware, little is heard from Green Pastures or Sound Bites these days except the plaintive whistling through the hollow reaches of cybersphere and the occasional tumbleweed meandering across your monitor along with the amaranthine chirping of techno-crickets. 

I have been beset by mind-cramps, faithful reader, and those incessant mental charley horses have caused me to seize up and rub it out until it goes away.

My Outlook Express has decided to join the mournful processional by going feet-up for the past two weeks.  So help me, if I have to look at another ugly window popping up telling me my server has not connected for the past 60 seconds and would I like to wait another 60 seconds, I may be shopping for yet another laptop as this one will be sporting a nice clean 20-gauge grin in its kisser. 

No telling how many emails I have idling out there which has given me the uneasy sensation of having my tether ripped free from the mother ship and being slowly drawn far out into collapsing darkness and utter cold.  Nooooooo!   

All this has me looking for a soccer ball with which I might strike up a friendship and wondering how I’d look in a long, scruffy beard.

Now I find out that my internet browser is giving me the cold shoulder, sharing the news that it has encountered a problem and must shut down and asking me to forgive it for any inconvenience.  Again and again.  For the past twenty-four hours.  You are most definitely not forgiven, Firefox.

All my bookmarks, all those saved articles, every designated folder.  Gone.  Kablooey.  Kaput.  With a resigned sigh, I regrettably slump back toward my old nemesis, IE7, and pray it will accept me back into its good graces.  Great.  Just great. 

Welcome, old friend. 

Where have you been?

(grinning fiendishly) We knew you’d be back…

Lest you think all in my life has been on disconnect, I need to tell you about a connection that I made recently that trumps all these bloopers rolled into one.  This past weekend I spent twenty-four hours with my son who has been away at a school for troubled youth for nearly six months.  I haven’t said much about it, and won’t, except to say that our prayers for a jubilee over his life seem to have a strong hearing in Heaven and the recent shifts in the atmosphere tell us that a very significant corner has been turned.

Will it last?  Not sure.  There may be setbacks and hard miles yet to come, but we have assurance that whatever it is that God wanted to get out of him in this chapter of his young life, He seems to have done just that.

Our life with Graham has consisted of a weekly ten minute phone call and a handful of short visits.  It’ll tear your heart out like nothing else when you take your monthly visit and when time’s up, to watch your only child disappear slowly behind the front door of an austere barrack-like building and you drive away, leaving him there, facing a fourteen hour drive home.  And all you want to do is call it all off, that this can’t be right, that we can make it work, but knowing every agonizing minute that the battle for his soul requires such sacrifice.

So be it, Lord.  Get Your glory in this…

I came within an eyelash of not making July’s visit and, boy, am I glad I listened to God.

Thursday morning, Douglasville, GA. 
I lay in bed, sensing the Lord was telling me I needed to go.  How can I, Lord?  The drive alone will put me back into Shepherd for more skin surgeries.  Go.  But, Lord, gas is so high.  Go.  But there’s a special speaker at church this Sunday and I’ll need to introduce him.  Go, go, go!

It took some convincing of Sandy to let me do it by myself but we agreed it was right, however I’d need to ask a special favor of the school.  I reached for the phone and dialed the all-familiar number.

“So, Mr. Mitchell, are you coming?”

“Yes I am, but I need to ask a huge favor…”

Thursday morning, SAME EXACT TIME, Northeast USA. 
Graham was bummed because he’d been told his parents would likely not be able to make it for the upcoming visitation.  He asked to stay in his room and fast through lunch, crying out to God for a miracle.  Please, God, let my parents come and see what you’re doing in my life.  Make a way, Lord.

Early that afternoon, a knock on the door startled his praying.  A head popped inside informing Graham that he was needed in the counselor’s office.  He was met there by his primary counselor and given the news that not only was his Dad coming for the weekend but they were giving special dispensation to have Graham spend the night in the hotel just so he could take care of his disabled father.

I cannot tell you all that transpired in those twenty-four hours but suffice to say what I hoped from them and what he hoped were not only realized but nitrogen-boosted beyond our expectations.  Around 1 a.m. and back at the room finally, Graham pulled out his guitar and asked if he could play a song that has become his testimony.  I said yes, of course, and found myself praying that the Lord would give temporary deafness to anyone behind those thin walls wanting to get a good night’s sleep.

There is a God who loves me
Who wraps me in His arms
And that is the place where I’m changed
And that’s where I belong

Take me to that place, Lord
To that secret place where
I can be with You
You can make me like You
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in Your arms

I’d been up for over twenty-four hours; in fact, I’d only had two hours’ sleep in the previous 40, but there was no fading on my part.  Miraculously, I was wide-awake still and glad I had not missed this.  And, wonder of wonders when my son looked at me with those bright, shame-free, tear-washed innocent eyes and said, “thanks, Dad, for sending me up here.”

My Dad can beat up your Dad.

Today is Father’s Day and I am reflecting on my one true example of fatherhood and, I can tell you, he’s got your Dad beat by a mile. Okay, so he only took me to White Sox games in the 60′s when they were awful instead of Cubs games as I was growing up on the south side of Chicago. And I never remember them winning. Not once. But I complained long enough that he took me to the north side one time to visit Wrigley Field when Fergie Jenkins was pitching.

And yes, the Cubbies won. 4-2. See? It made an impact on me. Dad did that.

Sure, it’s true that he worked for the phone company and they kept transferring him in the middle of the school year, making it hard to make new friends and easier as time went by to say bye to old friends. So what if I learned over time not to get too close to people. I did, in fact, learn to make friends quickly and my penchant for cave-dwelling has turned me on to spending long hours shut away with God (a ‘plus’ in ministry) and learning though other friends may come and go, He will never leave me nor forsake me.

Yeah, my stinking memory still holds onto the ONE time he looked so disappointed in me after a little league game where I had muffed a pop fly and caused us to lose a big game, amid all the other times he praised me in all things big and small and taught me the art of encouragement. Sorry, Dad. I did get over that a long time ago, and the fact of the matter is, I was kind of a goof at baseball. Thanks for all those years of leaving work early to pick me up from basketball practice and for rarely missing any of my games. You rock.

I say again, my Dad can beat up your Dad.

He’s a study in meekness and gentleness. He’s one of the kindest men you will ever meet. Many have been the times I’ve heard it said of my Dad that “he’s so cute.” Yeah, he kinda is. He’s just a short man but he stands head and shoulders above most. He’s also the youngest looking 77 year old you’ll ever know. And he doesn’t drive like an old man, which is always nice. ‘Tis true he has more hair than I do and in MUCH better shape but the one thing about my Dad that I can honestly say I have never known him to do is make fun of anyone. You won’t hear put-downs from his mouth. He builds up. He doesn’t tear down. And I have never, ever felt degraded by him.

Thanks, Dad. You rock.

And another thing. This man I am talking about? This man who is my Dad? Well sir, I’ve never seen a man love a woman like he loved my Mom. Throughout their almost fifty years together, right up to her passing from a three-month battle with cancer, he put her first every time. Not before God, mind you, but her needs always came before his own. The man’s a saint, I tell you.

There’s a whole litany of things I could say to honor my Dad but all of them would fall way short of the one thing that has stood out in my memory above all others. Growing up in my house, you always knew where Dad would be before the sun rose on his day: at the breakfast table with an open Bible and bowed head. His life has always been a worship to His Lord. And because of his devotion, his life has the mark of integrity on it. Before there was PromiseKeepers, he was the mold for what a promise-keeper should look like. I never knew him to leer at another woman or cheat God with the tithe or shirk his work responsibilities. They don’t make ‘em like Dad anymore.

My Dad can beat the tar out of yours.

Dad was a great provider, a committed husband, a kind father and he showed me it’s never out of place for a grown man to cry, indeed it is quite masculine—all these things, yes, but there will never be a more bold statement over his life than that sweet head bowed in a fixed amen to the Holy Book that shapes every moment of his life.

All which has me asking: How?

He didn’t grow up in a Christian home. He never received much in the way of love from his Dad or stepmom, and yet he filled my sisters’ and my life with it in abundance. Man, it just leaves me shaking my head. Here’s to you, Dad, with love. Thank you for being Jesus to me with skin on.

Sylvester Stallone still has one more Rocky to write. You are the Rocky Balboa of Dads.

Kudos, Mandy!

Oh, and please remember us little people on your way up, girl.

Jesus said, quoting Himself from the King James, “Lo, I am with you always.”* And that doesn’t just mean when we’re on the ground, either. He also said, “I will never, ever desert you and I will never, ever, ever forsake you.”** (which is how it reads literally in the Greek New Testament).

I just finished a sweet little article by a pastor who listed “The 3 Coolest Things About My Life Right Now” (the list actually cited six things, which was neat what he did) and among those he listed was a little nugget about his four year old daughter who hasn’t quite learned the order of her days of the week just yet, but she knows that her Daddy is home on Saturdays and Mondays. “And so she asks every single day if tomorrow is one of those days,” he writes.

That’s just plain adorable!

Once upon a time, when I was a first-grader at Vandenberg Elementary School in Dolton, Illinois, school was dismissed because of a blizzard. The GREAT Blizzard of ’67. When I had toddled off to school that morning, the ground was visible and the air was (as I remember it) clear. But old man winter came in with a vengeance between those school bells and when I stepped out on the school’s porch and faced a whitened world with snow up to my knobby knees, such fear gripped me that I cried. A lot. How would I get home? I wondered. A most pitiable sight I was.

The sky looked no higher than the top of the roof and the ground was fortuitously catching up. I would not dare step in among those swells of snow. They fairly looked like they would swallow me in an instant, so I held my ground on the school’s steps beneath the awning, snow swirling all around, gales howling. And me, crying my little heart out.

Then, magic. Out of nowhere a voice materialized, one that I well knew and one that immediately set my heart aright and sent every ounce of fear packing: Mom.

“I’m here for you, Scott.”

“M-Mom?” I curved a gloved hand over my brows to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

She looked from my vantage point to be the Ruler of the Snows and appeared to be walking on top of them! It was a sight to behold for a scared little boy in mittens and goulashes.

“It’s me, honey. Just put your feet inside the boot tracks I make for you. I’ll lead you home.”

And that’s exactly what I did. Step by step, I put mine inside hers, always close behind so as to never lose sight of my Heroine of the Drifts, becoming braver with each plant of my boot; but my bravado wasn’t in my ability to heft my weary legs, it was in the pace she set and the size of her tracks. That, and the fact that she was always looking back, checking on me, smiling her encouragement. While the inches rose all the way home, I took comfort that my Mom’s legs were always taller than the inches in spite of the telling fact that mine weren’t.

You know, my Mom took me to school that morning. She must’ve known the weather might turn, but that’s not the story. She was there for me even as the storms mounted and led me bootprint for bootprint through a scary world and got me home, safe and sound. That’s what’ll get us home, too. This One who made the seas, walks atop them and His legs are always longer and stronger than the worst that life can give us. This journey is taking us to Him and the way is to follow in His steps.

Little kids never need to fret over the days of the week. They never need to wonder, Is tomorrow one of those days, Dad? He is there for them, be it a Saturday, a Monday or a Snow Day.

“Daddy, will you be there?”

He says, “I AM.”

*Matthew 28:20

**Hebrews 13:5

This comes from the files of the “And you thought your trials were hard” department…

“Eliot was born with an undeveloped lung, a heart with a hole in it and DNA that placed faulty information into each and every cell of his body. However, that could not stop the living God from proclaiming Himself through this boy who never uttered a word.

In the midst of heartbreaking tragedy, the Mooney family found the presence of God strengthening, comforting, and guiding them. Their story reminds us to seek God and endure our struggles rather than blame Him for our hardships.”

(from the Igniter Media Group website)

For the 6-minute video, click here—and be in awe of God’s sustaining grace through this couple’s bittersweet journey of hardship and discovering God’s all-sufficiency through it all.

Pardon me while I go check to see if I have any guts…

_________________________________

“THE NEW FAMILY TRUMP CARD” (Family Time v Church Time)
by Albert Mohler (www.albertmohler.com)

Is “family time” encroaching on “church time?” Leadership, a publication in the Christianity Today family of magazines, surveyed 490 pastors last year, asking them about church life and family. A major theme — parents are taking their kids to soccer games rather than to church.

The soccer games are only an illustration, of course, but team sports loom larger and larger in the lives of many kids and families, often leaving little time for anything else.

From the Leadership report:

The phenomenon of overprogrammed kids in the last decade or so is well documented–to the point of satire. (A recent sitcom showed an alien begging off an invasion of Earth because his kid had “a thing.”) What isn’t so well documented is the effect this legion of extracurricular activities has on church life.

The pastors we surveyed report the overall busyness of families is keeping families away from church. Asked whether people are spending more discretionary time on family activities or church commitments, 76 percent said the scale tipped toward family activities. This contrasts with the perception of 62 percent of respondents that a generation ago, free time was more likely spent on church commitments. The balance has shifted.

(Read more)

HELLO, MY FATHER JUST DIED

Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 2 a.m.

The big hospital clock in room 4326 of Greenville Memorial Hospital said, with both hands straight up, midnight. Daddy had just taken his last breath. My watch said 12:01, March 6, 2007.

I had slept a little since his last morphine shot at ten. One ear sleeping, one on the breathing. At 11:45, I awoke. The breaths were coming more frequently and were very shallow. I will not sleep again, I thought. For ten minutes, I prayed aloud into his left ear with Bible texts and pleadings to Jesus to come and take him. I had made this case before, and this time felt an unusual sense of partnership with Daddy as I pressed on the Lord to relieve this warrior of his burden.

For the rest of John Piper’s journal entry, click here.

*photo courtesy of Josh Harris’ website