Letter to Grant on Humility

Grant,

I was thinking this morning about our ping-pong game last night. After you beat me three games in a row you got pretty confident that you could keep on winning. That’s when you started “trash-talking”. I wasn’t upset about the trash-talking, I know that you were just having fun.

But, when I came back and beat you the next 5 or 6 games in a row, you looked pretty upset. You were frustrated, and I would have been, too. But, in a way, I am glad it happened that way – because it gives us a chance to talk about a very important teaching in the Bible.

Boys your age loved to trash talk, brag on themselves, and try to make themselves look good in front of other people. It’s a normal thing – but it’s not a godly thing. God wants something better for you – he wants you to learn humility. And, if you can learn what it means to live as a humble person, God has promised to honor you – to show you his favor.

This was my experience in football. In 8^th and 9^th grade it was all about me and making myself look good. I ended up flat on my face both years, quitting the team in disgrace, and feeling like a loser. In 10^th grade I had a different attitude, because God was at work in my heart and I was learning how to walk before him in humility. And God honored that humble attitude. The trophy that sits in your bedroom is a reminder of that.

I want to spend some time this week talking with you about the following verses. What do you think?

If you are interested in doing this I will take you out for breakfast or lunch one day this week and we can talk about it.

I love you, Dad

Proverbs 16:18 ~ Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 29:23 ~Pride brings a person low, but the lowly in spirit gain honor.

James 1:1 – 10

¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Back into the Blogging world...a somber return

Well, after being kidnapped by FaceBook and held against my will for the past 2 years, I have made my way back to Blogspot (and the crowd goes wild!). My reasons? Although FB is cool and instant, it's a mile wide and an inch deep. It's like trying to say something meaningful by writing a thousand notes on index cards (if you are under 30 you will have to look up that strange term) and tossing them off John Hancock building. A few will make their way down to street level and get read - fewer yet will illicit some type of response - and fewer still will engender any meaningful conversation. I will keep my FB world alive for now, but I have to admit that I hardly ever snoop around my "friends" pages to see what's going on in their world. For me, it's mostly an online photo album that gives me a chance to talk about my faith and brag on our kids. (It's like hundreds of people all talking at the same time, all shouting out "Look at me! Look at me!" without anyone LISTENING.)

What it doesn't do is give me a moment to reflect. And today, I need to do a little reflecting for posterity - and for the good of my own soul. Yesterday was opening day of firearm season. Pictured above are my Dad and Grant in our fort that sits just inside the woods on our property. I won't bore all you non hunters with the tale of "the one who got away" (she didn't get far, I heard a gun blast 10 seconds after she crossed the river and ran into the field), but I do want to talk about what the day meant to me.

Two weeks ago my Dad was diagnosed with liver cancer. He is 70 years old and his health is not the greatest to begin with. To make a very long story short he and I got a second chance at the whole father-son deal when he quit drinking 8 years ago (thus the cirrhosis of the liver and now the cancer, so they tell us). We had an OK relationship before that, but I was one of the millions of young men out there with that empty place inside my soul that a father's love and affirmation was suppose to fill. God (my Heavenly Father) had already brought much healing into my life, but that ache remained.

Since the day I finally believed that the drinking and addiction were now truly things of the past (and it took A LOT of convincing before I would even get my hopes up again) a whole new reality set in, a door was opened for me to know - experientially - for the first time in my life - a father's love for his son. (I'm not saying my Dad didn't love me before - just that the addiction created so many walls I could never feel it.) How has my Dad said "I love you and I'm proud of you" without ever verbalizing the words "I love you and I'm proud of you"? He has shown his love by taking an active interest in my life, by helping me in anyway he could, anytime I asked him, and by doing things WITH me like building the fort that we hunted out of yesterday. He told me he loved me yesterday by driving 3 hours round trip to sit with Grant and me in that little fort staring at trees and squirrels for most of the day with a smile on his face. His body language said - I want to be here with you, there is no place I'd rather be. He told me he loved me in the driveway as he was climbing into his truck. I stuck my hand out to say goodbye and he ignored it and hugged me (I can count on one hand the hugs I remember getting as a kid - but these days they are not uncommon). Yep, my Dad drove out to my place on November 15, 2010 just because he wanted to spend the day with his son and grandson - the deer hunting was just the pretext. No, more than a pretext - it was a vehicle.

As I look out the window today at that fort, I must confess to getting choked up. I can't help but wonder if that was our last opening day together. All of a sudden I feel this desperation for more time with him. I feel this intense mixture of gratitude for him and panic that he is slipping away. I find myself pleading with God for more time - a few more years even. I so badly want him to be there for more opening days, to be there when Grant gets his first deer, for Megan's graduation from High School...

But, whether I have him for 10 more days or 10 more years, I did have him on November 15, 2010. And even though we didn't recover that deer (despite my fervent prayers) I will always treasure those memories.

Dad, if you ever get a chance to read this I want to say that I love you and I am so grateful to have you in my life - to call you Dad.