God Beyond My Periphery | Making Friends
Not long
after this “prodigal” moved home, maybe a couple months or so, I received the
worst news I had ever heard in my life up to that day. My Dad had colon cancer. He pretended there was really no need to be
concerned, but my family has always been like that when it comes to significant
health issues. My life went into a
spiral. Sometimes I was spiraling up,
but mostly I was spiraling down. Several
months later I received the worst news I had ever heard in my life up to that day. My Dad’s cancer had gotten into his
liver. It was terminal. Time would be no friend…to him or me.
Sometime
later; days or weeks, I do not really remember, I had a grace event of seismic proportion. I have to call it that because I don’t know
what else to call it. I think I was
saved when I was a child near the garden with my Dad; that is, I trusted Jesus
for the forgiveness of sin unto eternal life.
But this grace event seemed a
whole lot more real or actual; like when the anchor of a boat really catches
hold of something solid in the unseen depths below. But because I do not know which event secured
things in terms of my eternal destination, I can only call this a grace event of seismic proportion,
because surely it was at least that.
I’m pretty
sure it was August. I was on my way to
the beach. I had just finished up a
thirteen hour work day delivering ice to Whidbey Island with a guy who kept
asking me religious questions about where I would go when I died and what I
would tell God to let me into heaven. I
had no answers for him…or anyone for that matter. By the time I got to the beach, I was
tired. My back was soar. My heart ached. And the heat on my face from the sun felt
like a much needed embrace. My mind
whirled with a different set of questions; questions for God: “Is this some kind of joke? Really, my
Dad? You’re going to take my Dad?
What the hell gives you the right to take my Dad away from me? And now…when I need him most?”
Then I
experienced something apparently foreign to me because it certainly took me by
surprise. My thoughts shifted outside
myself to my Dad and I think I began to cry.
Here was a man who worked hard, never asked for much in life, gets
blindsided by cancer, begins to recover, only to find out months later that the
cancer is back; wadded up like a melon in his abdomen. And despite the spearing pain in his back and
side, he still got on his knees daily to commune with God. I knew he had something I did not. He had the answers to the questions that I
could not answer. He had freedom and joy
and love. I did not. He was not encumbered by the gravity of sin’s
scathing accusations. I was.
The sun was
being buried by the horizon. Soon
nightfall would be real. Very slowly I
leaned forward and collapsed to my knees in the rocks. I bent low, like I had seen my Dad do. I was low enough to feel the last of the
day’s heat radiating from the rocks, drying the tears on my face. For a minute I thought I could feel the same
pain my Dad might feel in his back and side.
No matter though. In that hushed
moment I surrendered to Jesus. I asked Him
to take my life and give it value; to change my heart that I might desire more
of Him, all of Him even. I asked Him to
be His friend. And wouldn’t you know it,
but He began to do all that and more.
A hunger for
worship was born in me; to sing loud and pray earnestly and give more. The pages of my “Young Discoverer’s Bible”
that sat dormant for years were now bright with illumination; the glare of truth
blinding my heart or soul or whatever that really deep place is where actual
spiritual transformation begins and wholeness commences. My work as a delivery guy was infused with thanksgiving
and joy. It was as if everything around
me was coming to life. But really it was
just me. And what is more, a friendship
emerged that I couldn’t have seen coming had this grace event not
happened: My Dad and I…I think we were
friends; I think he would have called me friend.
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