Remembering My Father

Thursday will be the one year anniversary of my father’s death. Julie and I were blessed to be able to be with him and the rest of my family during his last few days. I will remember those times of sadness and letting go forever.

The passing of my father was a very emotional time for me. Emotions are very complicated and I don’t know that I have the language to fully describe them. However, in simple terms, they were a mixture of sadness for my dad, a sense of finality of losing my last parent (my mother passed away in 2003) and concern for my father’s eternal soul.

As a Christian, I think we approach the passing of a fellow believer with both a sense of sadness and joy. The joy springs from a belief that the one who goes is in a far better place – and that we, ourselves, will one day join them there.

However, there is an uncertainty that leads to true, deep sadness when I think about the passing of my father. You see, I don’t really know if my father knew the saving grace of a relationship with the true and living God when he died.

I truthfully can say that ‘I don’t know’ where my dad stood with God in part because of my father’s decisions and in part because of God’s. My father talked a lot about god.. little ‘g’. However, I just don’t know if he ever really met and embraced God.. big G. And, at the same time – it is difficult to know how God would reckon my father’s belief in the little ‘g’ god.

I am hopeful that God has a more complicated system that we understand. I say that because it seems likely that He does. God, was able, for instance, to reckon Abram as righteous in the absence of him accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In the same way God understands how to deal with the eternal lives of infants that die before they are able to exercise their free will to accept Him. And the Bible speaks elegantly of how all of God’s creation speaks to those that no other tongue can reach - to announce the existence of God. I have to imagine that if they respond to God’s awe inspiring nature.. He listens and approves.

I am also a trained engineer and understand the basics of logic and reasoning. So, I know that a Bible verse such as “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, [then] you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) tells us how to be sure, ourselves, that we are saved. However, it does not exclude God from saving us based on His own love as well. For instance, I could say “If you comment on this blog entry I will send you $5”. And you would expect that I would send you the $5 following your comment if I am a man of my word. However, I could also choose to just give you the $5 for any number of other reasons as well. The ‘If ‘a’ then ‘b’.. need not be the only way to get to ‘b’.. but it may be the only way.

Having said that, however, it seems clear that when we are confronted with the reality of who God is and his offer of salvation – and we reject it – it appears we have little in the way of excuses. To that end, I wrote my father the following note during his illness. I want to share it with you. If you don’t know Christ as your Savior – just insert your name for the word ‘Dad’ in this letter. Because if you are reading this then you are as dearly loved by me as my father was.


Dad,

I hope this letter finds you well and enjoying your week!

I bet you’re surprised to get a letter from me. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve written you a letter. Can you?

Well, this is a letter – or at least a subject - that I’ve desperately wanted to talk with you about for so long now. And I guess I decided to write to you instead of trying to talk to you over the phone because I wanted to be able to get my thoughts clear and allow you to be able to take your time and read this at your pace and consider what I’ve written; because, to me, it is so important.

Dad, I just want to start out by telling you that I love you. And when I say that – I don’t mean the casual, I’d say it to anyone ‘I love you’ I love you. I mean the ‘I feel deeply in my heart a great love for you’ I love you. It is that love for you that requires me to write to you this evening.

Dad, I am very concerned about your health. But, it’s not the health that you may think I am concerned about. Yes, I am concerned and a bit scared, actually, for you as you face the surgery related to your cancer. However, the health that I am most concerned about for you tonight – and feel compelled to write to you about – is your spiritual health.

I have to admit that I am ashamed that I don’t talk with you more about this. I have been a Christian for many, many years. I know you know that. But, I don’t think that I have ever really deeply shared with you what having Jesus Christ as my personal Savior has meant to my life.

And yet, God is urging me to do it now – so I am just going to do what He asks of me and pray that what I have to say talks to you.

Dad, as a Christian I believe in God. And I don’t just believe in any God. I believe in Jesus Christ. That He is God. And that, in order to be in a relationship with God, you have to acknowledge Jesus and ask Him into your life as your personal Savior.

I have to admit that I don’t know if you have done that yet in your life. I know we have talked about god – with a little ‘g’ before. I know you have mentioned that you believe in god. But I don’t know where you stand with Jesus.

I imagine you might be wondering.. why Jesus? What’s the big deal? Well, I truly believe that life does not end when you die. I believe that your spirit, dad, will go on forever. And the big deal with Jesus is that He says that if you accept Him your spirit will spend eternity with Him in heaven after you die. But, He also is clear that for those that do not accept Him eternity will be spent separated from Him due to unbelief. And it is that fate, that separation from God that I wish so much for you to avoid.

Dad, I can’t promise that all of a sudden everything it your life will be better. I don’t know if Jesus would take away your cancer… or turn it into something other than cancer if you would have his as your Savior. That isn’t the Jesus that I have come to know over these many years. Bad things may still happen in your life and things may not turn out the way you would want to or would plan for. The big difference, if you believe, is that you walk through this life with Jesus as your friend, your advocate, and your counselor. He may not take away all of life’s pain – but He promises that He will walk through the pain with you. You will not have to suffer alone.

That promise is especially precious to me right now. You see, I have to admit to you that while I have been a Christian a long time now… I still suffer from pushing God away from me in areas of my life. It is a problem that I have had my entire life and one that has caused me immeasurable pain – and is causing me a lot of pain right at this moment. So, I don’t write this casually to you. I understand how hard it might be for you to understand there is a personal God out there that loves you and cares deeply for you. But there is dad, and tonight he is using me to tell you. I wish I could stand face to face and tell you this. That is why I was so interested in coming home to see you before your surgery. I’m not concerned about the surgery too much.. I trust your doctors will do an excellent job. I wanted to come because I want to look you right in the eye and tell you that Jesus loves you. I wish I could just put my arms around you and hold you and tell you that God loves you.. and wants you to know that He wants you to be with Him in heaven. He wants to love you. He does not want you to spend eternity apart from Him.

And dad, I know that I will be with Jesus in heaven – and it would break my heart.. for eternity if you weren’t there with us.

I wish I could hold my life up to you in order to convince you that life with Jesus is better that the life you have now. I often feel ashamed to even talk about Jesus because I seem to struggle so much in my own life with accepting Him and allowing His love to be real to me. It has been a real struggle in my life to take what I ‘know’ about God and ‘believe’ – into my heart – where it really sinks in deep and I can feel it on a daily basis. There are many reasons for that.. too many to discuss tonight. I only share that to tell you I can readily appreciate you might read this and wonder just how real – and how important this really is to deal with right now.

All I can tell you dad, is that Jesus has made all the difference in life to me. He is probably the only reason I am sane right now. He is probably the only reason that I remain married right now. He is probably the only reason that my kids love me and talk with me right now. I have done so many things in my life that have hurt myself and those around me for which the penalties could have been much more severe. God has saved me – in the truest sense of the word – throughout my life from consequences that could have further ruined my life and caused me immeasurable emotional pain. That is not to say that He will always do that. He may choose, tomorrow, to humble me further and take away all those things I just talked about. But, dad, I say this too you through the tears I am crying as I write this. I KNOW in my heart that He has always been with me. Even in my sin and my disbelief. And He will never leave me. And that has made.. and continues on a daily basis to make.. all the difference to me.

Dad, God loves you – and He is gracious to provide you time to decide what you think about Him. And wow, He’s now given you over 75 years! But, I am concerned that the amount of time He has provided you will not be infinite. And we don’t know how much time any of us really has. And so, it seems so utterly important and timely right now that I would just pray that you would take some time and consider Jesus’ offer to you of eternally life with Him.

Dad, with all my heart I want to beg you to consider giving your life to Jesus if you have not already done that. Would you please consider it – for me? You have to admit, our relationship is such that I ask you for very little in life. But I am asking you now and I sincerely hope that you will consider your relationship for your sake. Not mine.

God has made it really simple to start a relationship with Him. All He asks is the following:

i) that you understand that there are things in your life – sin – which is simply doing things in a manner contrary to the way God would have us do things – that have occurred – and may continue to occur.
ii) that you understand that in order to be in relationship with God, he requires a penalty be paid for your sins. God cannot live eternally in the presence of sin. It must be dealt with.
iii) that you understand that Jesus came to earth to die on the cross as a payment of your – and all of mankind’s – sin.
iv) And that you acknowledge to God – by talking to Him – that you accept Jesus as your Savior and that you accept his free gift to you of payment for your sins and an eternity with Him.

Dad, I love you. I deeply love you. Selfishly, I want you to be with me in heaven.

Would you please consider taking those four simple steps and doing them now??

I will be praying for you – as I always do – that you will.

Your loving son,