What fathers do

Nobody informed Isaiah, my one year-old, that it was Father's Day. Or maybe he did know, in his own way, which is why he wanted to wrestle instead of sit quietly on my lap in church. I took him outside the sanctuary, where we could roll around on the floor without getting in trouble. After a while he grew bored with me, and preferred to crawl rapidly from one thing to another, restless and inquisitive as infants and men are.

After awhile he began making his way to the double doors separating us from the sanctuary, and I kept retrieving him, lest someone come barging through and thwack his little bald melon. After a few iterations of this he began to squawk at me when I pulled him away from the doors. He wanted to go inside. I'm a dense person by nature, and so it took me a while to realize this.

Seeing him strive to reach those doors brought to mind the 84th Psalm, which I memorized years ago, when I was in a dark place. I had memorized other scriptures out of obedience, or as a means of strengthening myself. I had even memorized one I intend to whisper, should I be conscious, on my deathbed ("Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine. Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and though art exalted above all").

I memorized the 84th Psalm, however, in despair, certain that I was so far from God that my soul was forfeit. I would recite it as I walked the streets, pleading with God to let me live on his doorstep once my death came. "I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God/ Than dwell in the tents of wickedness," goes the Psalm. From the doorstep I would be able to hear my children inside the kingdom of heaven, I told myself. It was far more than I deserved.

That dark time came to memory as I watched Isaiah slap at the door with a slobbery hand, seeking entry into a place that he doesn't understand, and which -- if we are being honest with ourselves -- most of us understand little better. So I picked him up and opened the door, and he smiled his bucktoothed baby grin at me. I carried my child inside the sanctuary, because this is what fathers do. As I think back on my crooked walk with God, I recall that more than once he has done the same for me, and does it still, snatching me up from where I lie powerless, and bringing me in to that place which is home.

I would have settled for being a doorkeeper. But just as we could never abandon our children, our Father will not let us rest outside his house, not when we are yearning and broken. We haven't the strength to open those doors, but he opens them for us, and if you have ever felt the sudden rush of his presence when you least expected it, you know exactly what I mean, and why it is impossible, in the end, to reason one's way to heaven. So if you find yourself slapping at the sanctuary door, have hope even now, in the midst of whatever despair may grip you, that the one whose strength cannot fail will lift you up from where you lie, and carry you home.

How do I know? Because that's what fathers do.