My paternal great grandfather, I learned as a child, was an alcoholic shopkeeper somewhere in the coal region of N.E. Pennsylvania (ie. Scranton?). as a result my father had a father who was 'orphaned' away from his father as a young child. (I do not know exactly what this meant for the family or all that it entailed but it was considered enough in the mind of my paternal great grandmother that she chose to 'escape' to White Plains, NY. this city, just above The City, was where my grandfather helped put food on the table as a little boy by selling the morning (evening?) newspaper on the street. (he ended owning his own advertising agency as an adult.) it was not long until, evidently, he needed to be 'farmed out' to, I'm guessing, to his mother's sister and her husband. they lived in the rural part of the state. He was a pastor who is reported to have 'made the windows rattle' when he preached and that wherever he went the 'dead' church who received him caught fire. my grandfather came to see himself as one of a world of sinners that Jesus Christ took on flesh so He could be rejected of men and mocked and crucified by them in order to, with His life pay the 'wages of sin' (which 'is death') for every man who had ever and would ever walked the earth. attending school in the midwest he met and proposed to my grandmother and started a family that was to have 10 children. my father was 10 months older than the oldest, also a boy.
what I share with you now was something that I was not consciously aware of when my father was still living. my father's damning sin, in my eyes was that I never talked with me in dialogue. I don't know if knew how. nor did he ever ask my thoughts, ideas, opinions about anything. for this 'fault' and others for his name was generally blackened I tended to keep my distance from him and very rarely if ever confided in him. when I left home I basically excluded him from my life and never had anything to do with him. even after he had died in the late 1990s I remember nursing the idea that he had abandoned me. at that point I, out of curiosity, examined his, what he called 'poop sheets', 8.5"x11" pieces of paper which he folded in such a way as to create 8 sections upon which he would jot things that happened, appointments, etc. which occurred in any given week and then turned it over and did it on the other side for the following week. as I read through these sheets during the years of my adult life I saw that my father had indeed reached out in the face of continual avoidance.
I remember feeling I was doing him a favor when I visited him when he was dying of cancer, once at Frankford Hospital and once at the tiny apartment in which he and his second wife, Mildred, lived several blocks away.
I have, in recent times meditated on the fact that Devil means Liar, Deceiver, Slanderer, bringer of charges. As I thought of the part that He played, I thought of the fact that I had joined in with, taken on and fully agreed with his view of my father who did him damage.
so....what did I do for an encore? well, first, there was a repentance ('change of mind') concerning my father, a confession ('admit') of this my sin...unfortunately it was too late to forsake it with a tearful hug and a change of life toward my father. one thing I know is that he and God have forgiven me, but there is a huge, ugly scar that will never be erased in the here and now.
second, I fell all over myself 'helping' Nate. I was desperate for his love, but that isn't something you can buy. that was another colossal error. it was a transgression of the first commandment, 'Thou shalt not have any other God before me'. I have never, until within the last few months, turned my back on putting Nate before the Lord.
third, hearing of something that Jon was about to do a number of years ago, I said, in essence, 'THAT IS EVIL. DO NOT DO T-H-A-T! I don't, AT ALL, regret that. that was love. that was putting God
before Jon.
fourth, I once attempted to share the Gospel with Rod. He did not want to hear it. but as is true of all of you he is a gem of great value to God and a wonderful-good father to boot. (Jon too, one day, with God's blessing!)
....so, we are all works in progress, are we not?
where will we all go from here? the BIG question: how will our lives impact the lives of everyone we encounter here on planet earth, from one time encounters to those who we'll end up influencing most, especially our wives and our children? Time and Eternity will tell our stories. will we end up worshipping ourselves, family, other people or God alone?
as for this last, I am looking for my dear Lord and Savior to MAKE OF ME A PHOENIX! (def - a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or (mine!) ONE WITH A God-given CONFIDENT EXPECTATION OF SEEING CHRIST, AND SEEING HIM BEING LIKE HIM, FOR I WILL SEE HIM AS HE IS! (I John 3.1)
my prayer is that this will not be one of us but all of us. (Oh dear suffering father, I so long to see you, we both made new in His image!)
note: these are verses I hope to live by..
..I determine not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I Cor. 2.2
Matthew 10.32-9 therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven. but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven. think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. for I am come to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in -law against her mother -in-law. and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of Me. and he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me , is not worthy of Me.
Mark 10. 28-31 -then Peter began to say unto Him, Lo, we have left all and have followed Thee. and Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house or brethren or sisters or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My sake and the gospel's , but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren and sisters and mothers, and children and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life but many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
Luke 14.25-7 -and there went great multitudes with Him and He turned and said unto them, If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. and whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.
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