When I was a little boy, my father chased away my childhood monsters. He helped me fall asleep when I was afraid of what was under my bed. He walked with me on the uncertain streets of life while I was enveloped by his confident presence and love.
I remember in his 81st year when death was knocking on his door, he lay dying in a hospital bed. At the time, I was a pastor in Oregon and my folks were living in Kalispell, Montana. We made a trip to see dad knowing his time was short.
During our visit, I was awakened early one morning before dawn. The Lord told me to go to my father’s hospital room. On the way out of my parent’s home, I picked up a small New Testament and Psalms I had carried with me since college. When I arrived at the hospital, the Lord asked me to read Psalm 23 to my father. After reading the Psalm, I asked my father if all was right between him and the Lord. I wanted to make sure. My father told me he had always been afraid of committing to faith in God. Those words came from a man who I never saw fearful of anything. Facing death brings clarity and a sober finality to life.
I asked my father if he wanted to make things right and invite the Lord to be the Lord of His life. With tears in his eyes and through trembling lips, he pressed out a single word, “Yes.” His cancer had made it hard and painful for him to speak. A simple prayer repeated together brought my father face-to-face with his Redeemer. A few weeks later, he was gone.
That early morning, in the quiet of my father’s hospital room, my father and I chased away the most fearful monster of all – Death. I thought of that beautiful experience after I listened to James Blunt’s song, Monsters. Blunt wrote the song while his father was dying from kidney failure.
At some point, sons and daughters will pick up the assignment to chase away the monsters in a family when mothers and fathers are no longer present. That is the legacy of a loving family.
I provided a link to James Blunt’s song. It adds a poignant perspective on what I was trying to share.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=srH4AX8Xa3s
Faith in knowing that we have a loving and forgiving Father who is beyond time and space, as the True Father of our Sentience, our Very Being, our Creator, in knowing this in our spirit, no monster, not even fear, has a grip on us or can even touch us.
Behold, the magnificence and power of His true love for us.
Amen