Dear Daddy in Heaven

There are many things my mother taught me as I was coming up. Like the following: just because you’re wearing a blue towel the way Superman wears his cape doesn’t mean you can fly down a flight of stairs and expect to land on your feet, don’t try to throw rocks over passing cars – people get very angry about things like that, it’s not necessary to bring lizards in the house every time it rains – as a species, they have survived many years without your help, pollywogs prefer living in ponds –  not canning jars, it’s not safe to pick up every snake you see – some actually bite little boys that do that, your little sister is not a lab rat – putting her in the clothes dryer to see what would happen is not acceptable and just because you think there is treasure in the neighbor’s front yard doesn’t mean you can go digging for it. Those things were taught after the fact. Other things she taught me were preventive in nature and perhaps more common. Like the following: be polite – say please and thank you, don’t talk with your mouth full, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, wash your hands before a meal and when using the washroom, look both ways before crossing the street, don’t talk to strangers and it’s not polite to interrupt. But the most important thing my mother taught me was prayer.

 

The first prayer was simple. “God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for this food.” Short and sweet and when it was over, I could eat.

 

The second prayer terrified me. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Until that prayer I had no idea it was possible to die in your sleep. At that early age I hadn’t even considered death. That prayer was like taking a handful of No Doze. I no more wanted to sleep than I wanted to die. I didn’t mind the Lord taking care of my soul. I wasn’t even sure what a soul was. But, I knew that to have it taken, I had to die. Equating sleeping and dying may have been a Biblically sound concept. It served, however, to inspire me to do all I could to keep from falling asleep. Those pollywogs I put in a canning jar? Before my mother taught me catch and release? Well, I’d set the jar in front of my night light and watch them swim around until the early morning hours just to avoid falling asleep.

 

The third prayer was awesome. Well, not the prayer itself. To whom the prayer was addressed has proven to have a life-long influence in my understanding of prayer and just who God is.

 

For all the not so unusual reasons my mother became a single parent when I was very young. My mother and father were very young, as well. The later most likely a contributing factor to the marriage failure. You’ve heard the story or experienced it yourself, I’m sure. (It’s the same old story – different decade.) I missed my father. What boy wouldn’t? I remember praying he would return. One night, at bedtime, my mother explained that while I didn’t have a daddy around on earth, I did have a Daddy in heaven. She said when I prayed, I could pray, Dear Daddy in heaven. I thought about that a moment and then prayed, “Dear Daddy in heaven. Please be with my daddy here on earth and if he can’t come home… Please send a new daddy.”

 

Is that too childish? Don’t be too hasty to write that prayer off. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom heaven” (Matt. 18:3, NIV). I like the way it’s paraphrased in The Message, “…unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.”

 

Years ago, when my son was about four or five years old, I took him and about fifty youth to see the Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It is the most realistic, captivating depiction of the last week of Christ’s life leading to the cross and resurrection I have ever seen. It is performed outside against a backdrop of buildings constructed to give the appearance of Jerusalem. From the twelve Disciples right down to the livestock and fowl, the performers are locals of Eureka Springs.  At the time, even the role of Jesus was reportedly played by a local carpenter. For my son, it was realistic in ways only a child can experience.

 

At the play’s conclusion, Christ rises into the air and an angel says, “Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Two thousand people stood up and began filing out of the amphitheatre.  I was halfway up the stadium steps toward the exit, worrying over my youth group, when I realized Josh wasn’t holding my hand. A moment of panic quickly subsided when I spotted him still standing in front of his seat. I made my way back down the steps, through the exiting crowd, down our row of seats and sat next to him. He had an expression of absolute wonder on his face and his eyes were wet with what looked like the beginnings of a cry.

 

I knelt down next to him and asked, “Hey, son-shine, you okay?” He turned to me and said, “Aren’t we going to stay and wait, Daddy? The angel said Jesus would come back. We got to stay here and wait.”

 

What makes the kingdom of God real and opens the heart to accepting the Father’s love for us as though He were our own Dad – the simple faith of a child. As adults we are so afraid to be childlike in our thinking. Please note, I said childlike not childish. Perhaps it’s our fears that narrow our vision or life has simply beaten the stuffing out of us. Believing in things like love, faith, forgiveness and acceptance, whether receiving those things from one another or the Father, becomes near impossible to fully experience and accept, unless we become childlike. Just imagine what our relationships with family, friends, co-workers, spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, fiancées, or whomever could be if we could see the kingdom of our heavenly Father with the simple love and faith like that of a child.

 

Afraid of what others might think if you start expressing childlike faith? Afraid you’ll be asked for a urine specimen to prove you’re drug free or some such thing? Read this: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12, NIV). The Father gives us the right to become children. Free to express and experience joy, happiness, faith, forgiveness, acceptance, and love without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

 

~ Pastor Al