Eschewing fatalism

Father's Day is this coming Sunday and some of you had less than wonderful fathers. I have occasionally heard of people who cannot get on board with God as their heavenly Father because they harbor bad associations with the earthly model that was doled them. I think we should show some sympathy to such people---and then we should not let them get away with it.

In A Praying Life, Paul Miller flips the conventional wisdom that tells us we need to have lifelong "issues" from childhood scarring:

"The fact that we know our king or father is flawed means we know what a good father should do. Because we are created in the image of the triune God, we have an instinctive knowledge of how a father should love. If we didn't know what a good father was, we couldn't critique our own. Modern psychology can unwittingly trap us in our pasts. It is just another form of fatalism that kills our ability to see the story God is weaving in our lives" (italics mine).

I once read a book by a woman named Patti McCarthy Broderick titled He Said, "Press": Hearing God through Grief. (Patti's husband Capt. Mark Patrick McCarthy died in his F-16 in 1995, and his last words to his wingman was "Press.") Patti told me that well-meaning friends tried to give her permission to deal with grief in the usual ways, those stages that we are all told by psychology that we must go through. Patti chose instead to hold on tight to God and immerse herself in His Word for dear life. She allowed His Word, and not the Word of men, to be her authority on what is "normal" grief and to direct her to where comfort is found. She allowed God to mold her into His image under the yoke of grief.

I will end with two verses from some of the poetry she wrote in grief:

"Lord, I admit it is hard to press on

when it seems what I desire most is behind me.

I long for the love of a man You've taken home.

A man You gave me, and then took away all too soon. . . .

"So I press ahead, with my ears listening for Your voice.

Knowing that all else will fade away, but You will never leave me.

I heard Your voice clearly in my love's last word spoken,

He did not say, 'look back' nor even 'remember.' He said, 'Press.'"

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