A Father’s Project

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A pondSunday afternoon I was at the beach catching up on my reading when a family of four walked over the dune. The boy (about 7) and girl (about 5) were dressed for sand-play and got busy immediately. Without buckets or shovels they used their hands to begin carving out a pond next to the shallow creek, excitedly conversing about their project.

But Daddy had brought a ball and two mitts, one for him and one for his boy. “C’mon!” he coaxed, with pep in his voice. “Let’s play some ball!”

His son, deep into digging, wasn’t interested. So his daddy began tossing the ball high in the air, catching it himself, calling again and again for his builder-boy to join him, but he repeatedly answered, “I don’t want to, Daddy.”

Peeking over my book to watch what would happen, I created several scenarios in my mind:

  • Maybe the dad was busy all week, unable to find father-son play time, and this was it.
  • Perhaps he’d recently enrolled his boy in Pee Wee Baseball and hoped to coach him that afternoon.
  • Or was he a controller, fathering according to a strict schedule that included baseball that day?

Would this father patiently wait for his son? Would he insist he play ball? Would he leave the beach in a huff?

Suddenly the boy initiated his own call. “Hey, Daddy! Come and make this pond with us. We need your help!”

His daddy set aside his ball and mitts and moved into his children’s project, showing them how to use driftwood as shovels, adding a side canal, and praising their work. When the pond was “complete”, his son was ready for baseball, and the two of them played with gusto.

*            *            *            *            *            *            *            *            *

Scripture is generously sprinkled with references to fatherhood, and we all have (or at least had) a father. God uses father-metaphors to teach men how to lead their families, love their wives, discipline their children, and show tolerance toward others. But on the flip side of that instruction is his invitation to all of us, men and women alike, to call him Father. He wants to lead, love, discipline, and yes, show tolerance to us when we disappoint him.

Our heavenly Father wants us to embrace an intimate relationship with him that resembles the father-son joy I saw on the beach last Sunday. That was some good fathering, which is exactly what God offers to us.

BTW, before that family left the beach, the little boy had constructed an obstacle course…..

Obstacle course

…..through which he challenged his daddy to try skipping stones without hitting the sticks. It turned out to be more fun than pond-making, better than baseball, and a great demonstration of the warm connection God the Father wants to have with every one of us.

“May…. God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

Heartache Headquarters

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Yesterday we left the biblical Peter on an all-night fishing trip aching to be with Jesus, not sure it would ever happen again. After a miserable night of fishing failure (and probably confusion over what he would do with his future), all of a sudden his greatest longing materialized on the beach – a wonderfully familiar voice calling across the water to him!

Jesus calls to the men

Could it be? Did he dare hope? When their fishing net miraculously filled with fish, he knew, and from the core of his heart the ache exploded into fervent glee. It was so overpowering he threw himself into the sea, swimming wildly toward shore and his beloved Friend. Peter no longer cared about the monster-sized catch of fish, his boat, the other men, or anything other than the Person on the beach.

This is one of those scriptural moments when I envision Jesus throwing his head back and laughing as he watched Peter thrash through the water toward him. Did they embrace when he got there, wet man and dry man?

Jesus had been almost playful the way he’d surprised the men with that net of fish. And it wasn’t lost on them that he worked a second wonder when the strained net didn’t rip.

The whole scene must have been punctuated with shouts of happiness as the men encircled Jesus and reveled in the rich satisfaction of being with him again. Proverbs 13:19 says, “The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul,” a truth written all over these disciples on that day.

As I studied this passage, God asked me a question: “Margaret, do you long to see Jesus as much as Peter did?”

“Sure!” my heart answered. “Of course!”

Missing Nate

But then came his second question: “As much as you long to see Nate?”

“Well,” I thought, avoiding the answer, “when my heart aches to see Nate again, the longing will never be satisfied on earth as it was for those disciples. So of course I’m excited about seeing him in heaven.”

On and on my mental reasoning went. “I miss the daily companionship of my husband, the one I knew so well. I miss our conversations and his counsel. I miss him coming home at night, and I miss our I-love-you’s. The thought of one day having him back in all those ways sometimes makes me ache to see him.”

The more I thought about it, though, the more I knew something was amiss in my heartache-headquarters. That’s when God asked his last question: “Do you think you could get to know Jesus even better than you knew Nate?”

It was important to think about that, and in my deepest heart, even deeper-down than my sometimes-ache for Nate, I knew that if I made an effort to get to know Jesus better than ever before, the end-result would be a Peter-esque longing for him that would be unmatched by any other… even my longing for Nate.

“Grow in the…. knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18)

A Beach Party Lesson

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Many people say the Bible is hard to read. It’s a big book for sure; my copy has 2067 pages. But a good place to start is with the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They read like storybooks about Jesus, detailing the things he said and did.

One of my favorite Bible stories is told in John, and maybe the reason I like it so much is because it describes a beach party. Jesus hosts it for some of his disciples, and since the anguish of the cross is over, these men now know him as their risen Savior.

But things between them have changed. Where formerly they’d literally hung out with Jesus night and day, since the resurrection they’d only seen him twice, and then only briefly. No doubt they had questions. “Is Jesus out of the picture now? What does that mean for us? Should we go back to our old professions?”

Fishing boat

In the biblical beach story, Peter seems to be moving in that direction. “I’m going fishing,” he says. “Do any of you want to come?”

Some did, and surely as they bobbed along on the Sea of Galilee that night, they conversed about the radical changes for all of them since Jesus’ death and resurrection. Their understanding of what was going to happen next, either to Jesus or themselves, was minimal.

Talking on the boat, most likely they expressed a longing to be with Jesus “full time” as they had been such a short time before. By dawn, exhausted, hungry, and discouraged, the fishermen head for shore. Across the water about a length of a football field away, they spot a man on the beach who shouts to them, questioning them about their catch (or rather the lack thereof).

Jesus calls to the disciples

When their net miraculously fills with big fish, they recognize the man as Jesus and are thrilled! Even so, John writes, “None of them dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ” Their relationships with Jesus had somehow changed, and most likely this was painful for each of them.

My guess is they’d been missing Jesus so much that they literally ached to be with him. In many ways, I understand what they were going through, but not in relation to missing Jesus. My missing has been all about Nate.

When I thought about the disciples and especially the demonstrative Peter, who leapt into the water and swam toward Jesus the instant he recognized him, my heart jabbed me. “If only I could have that kind of one-more-meeting with my husband. Just one breakfast like the disciples got with the person they’d been longing for.” But the impossibility of that made Nate’s absence seem worse.

As I studied the beach Bible story, I sensed God was about to teach me something new. And it turned out to be something pretty important.

(Continued tomorrow…)

Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught…. Come and have breakfast.” (John 21:10,12)