Former Blackout Artist

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. – Proverbs 3:3-4

After graduating high school, I basically had about 2 months before I’d be leaving home to begin a new life in the United States military. My father asked me, “Do you want to earn some money before you leave?” I said sure! So he pulled some strings and got me a temporary job working in a coal mining laboratory there where he worked. It was so much fun! I got to learn how to drive a stick-shift pickup truck, taking samples from one lab to another on the far end of the tipple. And I was earning some real money! I felt so proud that next week when I cashed my first official payroll check. I’m officially grown up!

My supervisor’s name was Larry. He knew my father very well – they went to school together and played on the same team in the local summer softball league. So after a few weeks, we were sitting together eating lunch in the break room. We made small talk for a bit, and he finally said to me: “Did you know that you’re the spitting image of your father? You look like him, talk like him, and even have his same mannerisms.” I really looked up to my dad and took that as a huge compliment. And I’ve never forgotten how it made me feel that day, to be compared to my dad.

One of the common things I notice serving in prison ministry is that many of the inmates there didn’t have a father present in their lives growing up, no one to really look up to. So I’m reminded each week I go there of just how blessed I am to have had the positive influence of an earthly father who loved me and cared enough about me to teach me well.

Yet, as good (or not so good) an example as our earthly fathers were/are to us, each of us has a Heavenly Father who loves us and cares so much about us to teach us well in this life. And not just for a set period of time or a season – but for the entire duration of our lives – here and now, and later on in eternity.

If there’s a question to be answered today, it’s this: Do I truly resemble Him? In other words, do I share the kind of love that God shares with me? Am I faithful to Him and others in the way that He is faithful? Am I kind and forgiving like He is? Am I as patient? Am I as honest and genuine? No. Definitely not. I’m a proverbial work-in-progress, and some days I miss the mark so terribly.

“Did you know that how you speak, act, and love – that all of these things remind me of Jesus.”

Could there be any greater compliment than that?!