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I was the black sheep in our family. Everyone else: my parents, my brother and sister, all were strong in their faith. Me, I walked away at sixteen.
Every week for as long as I can remember Dad would tell us all to get our rear in gear so we wouldn’t be late for Sunday school and church. It would be the same for Sunday night service. We’d worship, pray, hear a sermon, congregate with the congregants, and glow the rest of the day or evening. That is, all the others would. God never connected with me, or me with Him. It just wasn’t happening, and I came to dread these times of family unity.
Once, I rebelled completely. Early one Sunday morning I slipped out of the house, left a note like the good boy I was, but made it known I wouldn’t be joining the family that day. Playing hooky gave me a sense of power that I’d never had before. Being the rebel made me swagger with pride. I’d shown them! They couldn’t tell me what to do. This God they worshipped had nothing on me.
Naturally, I was punished, grounded for the entire week. But that next Sunday I did it again. They’d have to padlock my door and window if they wanted to stop me. If they’d tried that with the window I’d have broken the glass. After a while, they left me alone and I continued going my own way.
Off to college a couple years later I began to see the truth behind my fight. My professors taught me that there was no God. Even if there was, He’d long ago given up on His creation. We were all alone and each of us had to make his own way.
Yet in all this I struggled for meaning. Drugs beckoned and their siren song called me to partake of the universe. Through them I saw the vastness of the heavens and the microcosm of the cells. We were all one. There was no God outside myself. I was God incarnate.
When the hallucinations went away and I was left in a haze of marijuana smoke buffering my crash, I would wonder where it all went. How come I couldn’t hold on to this glory that I’d experienced? As I studied the mysteries of the East I discovered how much work I had to do if I wanted true oneness beyond the drugs. After a while it became too much hassle. I tired of struggling to reach nirvana and got a job.
The years went by, and being the dutiful son, I gathered with the family on major holidays, always excusing myself from attending church, but sharing a communal meal like the old times. My sister became a pastor’s wife. My brother left the rat race of corporate America and began attending Seminary. Mom and Dad got older and grayer.
When the phone rang at two in the morning I had a fearful premonition. Calls at that hour will inevitably do that to you, but this time it was for real. Dad had had a serious heart attack.
Later that day after Dad’s surgery, the four of us stood around his bed. Well, Mom and my siblings did. I remained back against a wall. They all held hands, gripping Dad’s feeble fingers, and prayed and prayed. There was nothing God couldn’t do. He was mighty and powerful. He was the great healer. They commanded the affliction to leave Dad. There was no place for it in his body. In the power and authority of Jesus Christ, Dad was healed! Except he wasn’t. He lay there, the heart monitor beeping, the IV dripping, him lifeless but for the slight rise and fall of his chest. Even that was artificial because of the respirator.
They moved him from the ICU to a critical care room, closely monitored by the medical staff day and night. My family’s church had prayer vigils. Mom spent the balance of each day by Dad’s side. If anyone came to pray and didn’t flat-out declare that he was already healed, that person couldn’t come back. This was an assault against the forces of darkness. Never would there be a discouraging word spoken in that room! The force of my family’s faith would compel Dad to healing and life.
The day he died Mom and my siblings suffered a major blow. I had never been hopeful. My faith was only in the doctors. Given their gloomy prognosis I believed all along that Dad was a goner. And so he was. For my family, for the church, all those prayer warriors stating that God’s will would be done because they commanded it, I think all of them underwent at least a minor crisis of faith that day.
Three days later at the funeral home the faithful were back in force. This was the day the Lord had made. My family would rejoice and be glad in it because this day, Dad would be raised from the dead.
They surrounded the open casket. They grabbed the embalmed hands of Dad as others from the church raised their voices in thanksgiving. “Rise!” Mom shouted. “You are as Lazarus!” my sister stated. “Come forth and walk!” my brother declared. They lifted and pulled at Dad’s hands. The casket trembled. The church sang, “Hallelujah!”
Just as the funeral director rushed into the room to survey the commotion, the casket fell to the floor. Dad’s body tumbled part way out, has nose grinding into the carpet. No spark. No sign of life.
The funeral director gawked in horror at the desecration of his handiwork. Mom collapsed in a heap with a terrifying shriek of despair. My sister stood wide-eyed, her mouth open, breath coming in rapid gasps. My brother’s shoulder’s slumped. He covered his face with his hands and wept. Those who had supported in prayer began to slip away, shock and sadness painting their silent exit.
It wasn’t long after Dad was buried that my brother left Seminary. He said, “If God doesn’t hear our prayers and heal His faithful ones, how can I preach about His goodness?”
Further grief came to the family when we learned that my sister had an affair – with one of my prior college professors, as it turned out – and was divorcing her faithful husband.
Mom continued going to church, but like a dried out husk from an ear of corn, she was fragile and empty.
Curiously, I came away from the incident with a new appreciation for God. I saw that He wasn’t a being that would do what we commanded simply because we said He should. He wasn’t a divine butler who would come and do at our beck and call.
I explored this God I had never known. I saw that if we could define Him and make Him into the image we wanted, He wouldn’t be much of a God at all. Beyond anything we could conceive, He was sovereign. He loved us. He died for us. But He did it on His terms.
It was this mystery of God that drew me back. It was His beauty in all creation. It was His heart, the heart of a Father desiring a lost son to return.
That which happened to my family was tragic. God didn’t send us that situation, but He allowed it, and He didn’t intervene as was so fervently desired. There was a lost sheep that had wandered far afield, a black sheep, and He reached out to him. Out of the evil of broken hopes and loved lost, God brought a wandering sheep back to the fold. He made something good that was meant for evil. That’s made all the difference.
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