Tag Archives: dad

Hands

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In the grip of Christ, we have no need.

My dad drew up my hand and placed it next to my grandfather’s, who was in the casket.  He then placed his next to mine, so that all three were in a row, saying, “You see, Sammy, where you get your hands?”  My young eyes noticed the similarities between my grandpa’s hands, my dad’s, and my own.  Each had the same wrinkly skin and stubby strength, passed on from generation to generation.  In that moment, as a little boy, I learned more than just genetics; I learned that everyone you love, will leave you, no matter how strong his hands.

Our safety in life is not found in all the trivial and temporary things that can be stripped away in a second.  Our comfort in life is not found in plans, pleasures, power, or people, for all will vanish.  If we place ourselves into their greasy hands, we will slip right out.  These things will always let you down.  People will always let you down, your possessions will always let you down, pleasures will always let you down.  None of these have hands that are fit to hold the human soul.

So what should you give yourself to and where is your solace found?  Recently, some have said that religion is not the answer.  They are quick to point out that Religion will let us down, too—that religion hurts, drops, kills.  It is graspless.

When your friends fail, when your money disappears, when your reputation is tattered, where is your comfort to be found?  Even more, when your life itself refuses to breathe again, what is your comfort in death?  What will hold you then?

It seems that we need hands that have been both to heaven and earth.  We need hands that hold the power of the cosmos and that hold the palm of the child.  We need hands that have thrust the stars into their orbits and that have thrust the heart into the human.  We need hands that have both the power to heal and the tenderness to hold.

The hands of Jesus Christ are the hands for us.  Not only did they spin the world into motion, but also they touched the oozing sores of a leper and dried the tears of a prostitute.  They wakened the universe with power and they writhed in pain from mortal nails.  His hands were both divine and dead, miraculous and mortal.

The holes in his hands are a portal through which heaven and earth touch.  And that is where he holds us.  That is our solace and comfort.  That is where we will never be shaken, the spot from which we will never be let go.  In the grip of Christ, we have no need.  In the grip of Christ, we can let go of our troubles, our idols, and our self-definitions.

What is truly, deeply, our only comfort?  Even the most non-religious person can see that our comfort is not in what we can hold onto, for our grasp is so weak and the natural course of this life rips everything out of our grip.  My solace and comfort come not from what I can hold onto, but from Whom is holding onto me.

So reads the Heidelberg Catechism, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”  The answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

You belong to Jesus Christ and he will never let go of you.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[1]

© Samuel Kee, 2012

[1] Colossians 1:15-17, ESV.

Daddy, Please Come Home

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We all long for our dads to come home to be with us.

When I was a kid, there was always a magical moment in my day.  It was the moment my dad came home from work.  Day after day, year after year, the effect was always the same: excitement.  It never wore off.  I can still hear the sound of his pick-up truck’s tires, grumbling up the limestone driveway, driving a rut in to the rock just as surely as that moment did into my heart.  I loved it when dad came home after work; and he always did.

Contrast my experience with a story I heard from a teenager recently.  This boy’s parents were separated when he was very young, and he would only be able to see his dad once per week, on Fridays.  He was like any boy and every boy, having a deep desire to be with his dad.  One week, just like all the other weeks, his dad was supposed to come home so that they could play board games.  The boy’s mom told her son all week long, “If you’re good this week, then you can play games with daddy when he comes home on Friday.”  Though it was difficult for this young boy to “be good” all week, he did his best.  Yet when Friday came, his dad did not come home.  In fact, he never came home; this boy never saw his dad again.

Yesterday I sat in a courthouse in Chicago, observing the criminal trials.  As case after case was heard, criminals in DOC jumpsuits were escorted before the judge by armed guards.  Most were men; many were fathers.  These were daddies who would not be coming home.

I’ve often wondered why God needed to rest on the seventh day of creation.  Genesis 1-2 describes how God worked for six days, but then rested on the seventh day.  It doesn’t make any sense to me, because God does not get tired.  There must be another way of understanding “rest.”  And there is.

In Psalm 132, God’s rest is tied to his dwelling, so that the place of his rest is linked with the place of his dwelling.

Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!  Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. (verses 7-8)

Quite literally, God’s resting place is his temple.  The temple is the place where God “goes home” to dwell.  Just as after “building” the world, God rested in the Garden of Eden, after building the temple, God rested in it.  The temple was the place of God’s dwelling, where he “rested” with his children.  A few verses later, Psalm 132 says:

For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.” (13-14)

God dwells where he desires and he dwells with whom he desires.  God desires to dwell with his people after he comes home from work.  The temple was the place where God could rest with his people.

In other words, God rested on the seventh day of creation not because he needed a break, but because we needed a Daddy.  He rests in order to dwell with us forever, the desire of his heart.

The purpose of the temple, as Greg Beale observed, was to be a divine resting place.[1]  It’s the place where our heavenly Father comes home after work to be with his children and the place where his children get to be with their Father.  It’s a place of joy, anticipation, and love—a place that mends our broken relationships and heals our loneliness, by giving us a Father to be with forever.

As Hebrews 4:11 says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.”

Today, we do not have a temple, but we still have a heavenly Father and he still offers rest.  He has created us (Genesis 1-2) and he desires to rest with us (Psalm 132).

© Samuel Kee, 2011

[1] G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission (Downers Grove,IL: IVP, 2004).

My Father’s Garage

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Do not make any verdicts on your life before placing it in his healing hands

“No one can be saved—in virtue of what he can do.  Everyone can be saved—in virtue of what God can do” (Karl Barth).

When I was growing up, my dad rebuilt wrecked cars.  He’d go to the junkyard or auction, bid on a real wreck, and then have it delivered to our home.  Some of these cars just had fender benders, but most were totaled.  For insurance purposes, to be totaled means to be beyond repair.  And that’s the way these cars looked to me when they arrived at our home.  When I looked at the car, it looked beyond hope, but when my dad looked at it, he saw the finished product.

After all, I was not the mechanic.  If left up to me, the car would remain in the junkyard and eventually hauled off to the scrap yard.  I did not have the creativity, perseverance, know-how, technology, or desire to rebuild such broken things.

But my dad had all of these in spades.  Junk didn’t scare him, nor did hard work.  To him, these cars were worth it.

I know it’s a crude analogy, but it seems to fit the way God sets his special eye on us when we’re junking away with the rest of the wrecks.  God has no taste for the cars that shine, but for those who are at their worst.  The ones the world rejects.  The ones that are beyond repair.

Totaled.  That’s a good word to describe us cars; and if left to ourselves, there is no way that we could ever be roadworthy again.  We are twisted and caved, with flat tires and broken glass, our engine is cracked and axels pulled.  There is no way that we should ever be driven again.

But God has his special eye on us; he loves to bring home the unwanted.  He loves giving second chances to those in the junkyard.

“No one can be saved—in virtue of what he can do.  Everyone can be saved—in virtue of what God can do.”  The salvage yard is not a place of potential, but a place of condemnation.  Salvation does not start with a working engine, but with the word “totaled” written on your title.  Salvation begins in the salvage yard.

God can save you.  He is the master mechanic who loves putting wrecks back on the road.  You are never beyond his repair, unless you try to fix yourself.  When we try to fix ourselves, we resist his tender garage.

We cannot fix ourselves, our only option is surrender.  No one has the ability to fix himself, on the one hand, but absolutely everyone can be fixed by God, on the other.  Salvation is both narrow and broad at the same time.

Do not make any verdicts on your life before placing it in his healing hands.  Do not say, “I am junk,” before hearing Him say, “You are loved.”

© Samuel Kee, 2011

Dangerously Close

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None will escape his heart.

Growing up, we had an old Basset Hound named Bo.  Bo boasted of about half of a brain and an incredible stench that she could not seem to shake.  She was your typical Basset Hound, sitting low to the ground like a fat propane tank, lifted just inches above the earth by clumsy feet.  When she ran, she ran sideways and forward, all at once, which we could never figure out.  She was usually unsettled and always howling—a nervous wreck, this Bo.

Bo could do one trick, nonetheless, despite her glaring limitations and awkward physique.  My dad taught her this trick (which I should probably get his permission before I share this story—nah!).  My dad would take a drink of milk and then lay on his back on the living room floor.  He would beckon Bo, who would, very nervously, approach his head.  After peering into her prize, she would happily begin to lap the milk up from my dad’s mouth.  Yes, that’s right: the dog would drink the milk from my dad’s mouth.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, gross, right?  Some of you are thinking, “Awesome!” which is my belief on the matter.  But whatever you think, we can all agree that that my dad and the dog were dangerously close to one another.

This childhood encounter compels us to ask the question, “Where do you draw the line between species?”  When have two species crossed the line with their personal space, dumb pet tricks aside?  I think it took bravery on both sides of the milk: the courage to give and the courage to take.

This is the sort of thing you would find among the prophets of the Old Testament.  I can imagine crazy Ezekiel, lying on his back with a face full of milk, inviting the mangy dogs of Israel to come and drink without cost.  Yes, it is a prophetic statement, which teaches us what it means for one being to get dangerously close to another.

Another prophet picks up the same theme when he writes about God’s willingness to get close to us humans:

He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart.[1]

Isaiah tells us that God is our close and loving shepherd, who does more than just keep an eye on his sheep.  The typical shepherd in those days would have hundreds of sheep and various ways of looking after them (i.e., dogs and young helpers).  In light of having so many sheep, it’s nonsense to think that the typical shepherd would get this close to any of the sheep.  Shepherds guided with rods and staffs and herding animals.  They did not worry too much about individual sheep, to the point of making intimate contact with them.  If they went astray, they went astray—no big deal.

But this shepherd that Isaiah describes is one who breaks the typical shepherd-sheep relationship model.  In fact, not only does he tend the sheep, but also he wraps his arms around just a few and carries them.  He picks them up and carries them so close that the sheep can hear his heart beating for them.

And then he goes back to the flock and picks up a few more sheep so that he can carry them.  They get to journey with the shepherd and hear his heart beat, too.  We’re to understand that the shepherd goes back to the flock as much as it takes so that he can carry every single sheep under his chin, close to his heart, wrapped in his warm arms.

He’ll do it until he brings each one of his sheep home.  None will escape his heart.

Such an image of God’s love for his people portrays a God who gets dangerously close.  He breaks all of the rules and acts with wild abandon toward his precious flock.  Always remember this: God is more interested in loving dirty, lost sheep than he is in being dignified.

© 2011 by Samuel Kee

[1] Isaiah 40:11.