This earth that we are walking around on is a cracked place. There are evils on every side....we are experiencing racial wars, culture wars, political wars, and oh yeah, how-to-pay-the-bills-this-week wars. If you listen to the news or keep up with current events, you could easily lose heart and feel that nothing is going right in the world. I often let myself fall into despair about the state of things, but I (and we) should not. There is hope. I have seen God do the impossible in my own lifetime, and here's just one story....
When I was a little girl, we lived in a typical suburban neighborhood, not quite middle-class. My Mama stayed at home, raising the kids and keeping our lives organized, healthy and stable. My Daddy worked at the Post Office in Atlanta, doing things completely alien to his artistic salesman nature, to keep food on the table. If you compare the things that we had to what is "expected" now, we would be considered poor, though I never thought that. We had love and security in our home and that was treasure enough.
My Daddy. A man who was raised as poor as possible....he grew up knowing hunger, extreme cold and heat, the lack of shoes to wear to school, very little education, a drunken father and hope in short supply. So when I say I saw God lived out in my father, it is no small miracle.
My Dad became a Christian when I was twelve years old. He had been a fun and kind Daddy before that, but when Christ redeemed him, he was changed all the way to the core. Where there had been rules, there was now relationship. Where there had been fear, there was now love. I saw him praying, reading the Word and loving his wife like he had never loved her before. My parents had been on the verge of divorce when the Lord swooped down and rescued them. And us.
A true Christian is marked by love. A true one. Bitterness can eat a person alive, but the forgiveness that God gives a repentant sinner emanates from that person's life. How can I not forgive, when I've been forgiven so much? I saw this walked out, when the devil moved next door to us in my teen years.
Our family lived next to a large wooded lot, probably 4 or 5 acres big (or not -- it seemed enormous). My siblings and I had grown up playing in that hallowed field. We had several tree houses, "forts" and trails carved into it and I knew every inch. We picked blackberries, played cowboys and Indians, "run away from the orphanage" (that was always so romantic) and all those things kids used to play. When Mr. Devil Man bought the property and built a house on it, even though we were getting older, it was a sad day for us kids. He built his house right up on the highway, so you couldn't see it from our side next door. But we sure saw him. All the time. My Dad had maintained part of that property because it hit right on a ridge that flowed onto our lot. Mr. Devil came over and told my Dad that he was not to maintain that part of the property and that us kids were not to step onto his land. When Dad would crank up his lawnmower, this man would run out of his house and stand on the edge of his property, making sure that Daddy didn't encroach onto his side. Any time Dad went outside to garden or do his many projects, he had a spectator on the sideline, watching and waiting for him to make a mistake or misstep. Devil man then cut a ditch and begin rerouting his runoff water onto our lot. He pitched fits about all kinds of things. I remember his red face, ranting and raving about who-knows-what. I was just a kid and wondered what all the fuss was about. This man seemed to have one purpose and that was to torment my Dad. I knew that my Dad would never purposely harm this man or impose on him, but with the way the guy was acting, I thought he should just punch him in the nose. Daddy was masculine, strong and capable of such, but I saw something else coming out of him that wasn't born of anything from this world. Something that made no logical sense.
My Daddy started praying for him. All the time. He said that he just needed love and Jesus, and that we were to be respectful to him. He could have sued this guy over the water issue and he could have thumbed his nose at him. But he didn't. Mama began taking him cookies. Daddy offered to help him with things he was working on. Still mad. Still grumpy. Still hateful. Years went by. So many years, my sister and I grew up, got married and busy with our own lives. I didn't think about Mr. Devil much anymore. Except one Thanksgiving Day, not long after Ken and I married.....
The table was groaning, the extended family was gathered, and the prayers were said. As I gazed about the room full of people, my heart was lifted in gratefulness to God as I saw what it means to be a Christian. Because that Devil Man was sitting right at the head of the table, eating, smiling, and talking with the family. He was now my Daddy's friend.
Things could have gone so differently. We could and should have ended up with a war all those years. Certainly, Mr. Devil Man wanted one. He made no bones about lobbing his hate mortars our way, right off the bat and consistently through the years, even when my Dad's kindness was lobbed back, over and over... But God's love persisted way past the point of what was reasonable and fair or even sane. It was God's child acting like Jesus -- when he was persecuted and treated unfairly, he responded with the love that God had given him.
When I met the difficult teen years, made mistakes, put my toes in the water, was tempted at the cliffs.... there was this place of refuge in my soul because I had learned, firsthand, what it means to trust in a God like that.
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