Thoughts on Dad and Mom
While it is still December, I want to take this moment to express my love and honor for my dad and mom.
Dad died on Christmas Day, 2005. Mom died on December 1, 2006. Thus, I lost both parents in less than a year, and both at this time of the year. I sit here and look at my last two most cherished pictures of dad and mom and feel afresh the depths of love and gratitude I have for them and for their legacy.
One picture is of them together, both beaming with the contageous joy that marked their lives particularly in the last few years of their lives. The other is of mom and me, from when mom visited us and our church last, about 40 days before she went home to her Savior and saw the One for Whom she had so long lived.
It speaks of the kind of lives they lived that when they died, I felt orphaned, even though I was 48 years old and the father of six. I was father- and mother-less, and I felt it.
Reflecting on this has led me to two thoughts. First, I have regretted all the times I have failed to express adequately my grief in others grief when a parent has died. Until I lost my parents, I did not know how hard it is to lose a parent. People lose parents in different ways: some through death, some through their parents' divorce, some through abandonment, some through massive neglect. At some point or another we all feel orphaned, and I grieve that in the past I did not enter the grief of others enough, and I ask forgiveness again for it.
Second, I am affected by the deep mystical bond that human relationships involve. One of the reasons I believe in God is that only a mysterious, deep, mystical, transcendant Being can account for the mystical, deep, transcendant experiences of the human soul--including human relationships.
Love is profound. Marriage, parenthood, and deep friendship--even when far less than ideally expressed, are mystical bonds that cannot be explained by evolutionary theory or philosphical materialism; the idea that matter and the physical are all that exist.
There exists between humans--and I think we all have tasted this at least for a few moments here and there in life--a connection that transcends what can be explained by the chemical actions and reactions of our biological make-up.
These are matters of the spirit, of the soul, of transcendant reality. They are mystical and mysterious sign-posts calling our hearts to look above the world to the Transcendant One from Whom all such wonders derive.
Friends, if in these past few holiday weeks spent in family-love, friendship, or fellowship, you have had at least a moment or two when you've been lost in joy over a relationship, allow that to lift your soul above the here and now into the realms of glory, where God the Mysterious and the Profound dwells.
If you have loved and been loved, it is because the One who is love exists.
Dad died on Christmas Day, 2005. Mom died on December 1, 2006. Thus, I lost both parents in less than a year, and both at this time of the year. I sit here and look at my last two most cherished pictures of dad and mom and feel afresh the depths of love and gratitude I have for them and for their legacy.
One picture is of them together, both beaming with the contageous joy that marked their lives particularly in the last few years of their lives. The other is of mom and me, from when mom visited us and our church last, about 40 days before she went home to her Savior and saw the One for Whom she had so long lived.
It speaks of the kind of lives they lived that when they died, I felt orphaned, even though I was 48 years old and the father of six. I was father- and mother-less, and I felt it.
Reflecting on this has led me to two thoughts. First, I have regretted all the times I have failed to express adequately my grief in others grief when a parent has died. Until I lost my parents, I did not know how hard it is to lose a parent. People lose parents in different ways: some through death, some through their parents' divorce, some through abandonment, some through massive neglect. At some point or another we all feel orphaned, and I grieve that in the past I did not enter the grief of others enough, and I ask forgiveness again for it.
Second, I am affected by the deep mystical bond that human relationships involve. One of the reasons I believe in God is that only a mysterious, deep, mystical, transcendant Being can account for the mystical, deep, transcendant experiences of the human soul--including human relationships.
Love is profound. Marriage, parenthood, and deep friendship--even when far less than ideally expressed, are mystical bonds that cannot be explained by evolutionary theory or philosphical materialism; the idea that matter and the physical are all that exist.
There exists between humans--and I think we all have tasted this at least for a few moments here and there in life--a connection that transcends what can be explained by the chemical actions and reactions of our biological make-up.
These are matters of the spirit, of the soul, of transcendant reality. They are mystical and mysterious sign-posts calling our hearts to look above the world to the Transcendant One from Whom all such wonders derive.
Friends, if in these past few holiday weeks spent in family-love, friendship, or fellowship, you have had at least a moment or two when you've been lost in joy over a relationship, allow that to lift your soul above the here and now into the realms of glory, where God the Mysterious and the Profound dwells.
If you have loved and been loved, it is because the One who is love exists.
Labels: Apologetics, Christian Heritage, Family, Parents
posted by Tim Shorey at
9:22 AM
2 Comments:
Pastor, thanks for your thoughts. They brought several thoughts to mind as I read them. First, you were very much there for me as my mom passed to her reward. A couple of phone calls, one very lengthy to counsel me in how to respond to my siblings. You drove 70 miles to attend her funeral which took 4 hours or more out of your already busy schedule. Thank you.
My second thought is that we grieve because God grieves. As image bearers, we reflect Gods emotions because we are God icons, or the image of God. When his first children sinned, he must have grieved their spiritual and subsequently their physical death. When it comes to sin, could it be that we don't accurately grieve when we grieve the Spirit. As sinners, we will never grieve as we ought, for our selves or for others. It shows me my selfishness. My flesh doesn't want to grieve for my own sin nor for the grief of others. My flesh cries out, "why should I be inconvenienced by the grief of others?" My flesh wants comfort, convenience, ease and happyness. To grieve for a brother or sister in Christ comes with a steep price tag. I have to put my own things aside, wrap my mind and heart around someone elses pain and concern, sympathize with them, pray for them, communicate to them, feel with them. All this is hard work. It is disruptive to my agenda. The fact that a Pastor or brother comes alongside with words of understanding, encouragement and attempts to feel with you, is nothing short of a work of grace. Sinned has distroyed e very aspect of humanity. Grace, on the other hand, brings us back in the direction of more accurate image bearers in what often takes years or lifetimes.
My thoughts....
JR
Wonderful thoughts brother. God's image being restored means even this: that we are learning to grieve as He grieves.
We sometimes tell people to "have a heart" calling them to sympathy and compassion. God not only tells us to "have a heart", He has one. And then He redeems our heartless hearts and makes them tender and caring again--more like His.
Here is reason for joy: I'm getting and gaining a heart like God's, as are all who are born again by His grace.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home