I believe in God, the...
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I believe in God, the God who I have come to know as Father, as Abba -- Daddy.
I always envied boys I saw walking hand-in-hand with their fathers. I thirsted for the conversations fathers and sons have about the birds and the bees, or about nothing at all -- simply feeling his breath, heartbeat, presence. As a boy, I used to sit on the front porch watching the cars roll by, imagining that one day one would park and the man getting out would be my daddy. But it never happened.
When I was eighteen, I could find no tears that Alabama winter's evening in January 1979 as I stood finally -- face-to-face -- with my father lying cold in a casket, his eyes sealed, his heart no longer beating, his breath forever stilled. Killed in a car accident, he died drunk, leaving me hobbled by the sorrow of years of fatherlessness.
By then, it had been years since Mama had summoned the police to our apartment that night, fearing that Daddy might hurt her -- hit her -- again. Finally, his alcoholism consumed what good there was of him until it swallowed him whole.
It wasn't until many years later, standing over my father's grave for a long overdue conversation, that my tears flowed. I told him about the man I had become. I told him about how much I wished he had been in my life. And I realized fully that in his absence, I had found another. Or that he -- God, the Father, God, my Father -- had found me.
(From a meditation on the meaning of God's strength, from "The God Who Embraced Me," by John W. Fountain, broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, November 28, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5016108)
I always envied boys I saw walking hand-in-hand with their fathers. I thirsted for the conversations fathers and sons have about the birds and the bees, or about nothing at all -- simply feeling his breath, heartbeat, presence. As a boy, I used to sit on the front porch watching the cars roll by, imagining that one day one would park and the man getting out would be my daddy. But it never happened.
When I was eighteen, I could find no tears that Alabama winter's evening in January 1979 as I stood finally -- face-to-face -- with my father lying cold in a casket, his eyes sealed, his heart no longer beating, his breath forever stilled. Killed in a car accident, he died drunk, leaving me hobbled by the sorrow of years of fatherlessness.
By then, it had been years since Mama had summoned the police to our apartment that night, fearing that Daddy might hurt her -- hit her -- again. Finally, his alcoholism consumed what good there was of him until it swallowed him whole.
It wasn't until many years later, standing over my father's grave for a long overdue conversation, that my tears flowed. I told him about the man I had become. I told him about how much I wished he had been in my life. And I realized fully that in his absence, I had found another. Or that he -- God, the Father, God, my Father -- had found me.
(From a meditation on the meaning of God's strength, from "The God Who Embraced Me," by John W. Fountain, broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, November 28, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5016108)
