... about Mercy
In a few days time it will be exactly 30 years ago that my father died. I am now exactly the same age he was when he died. It feels strange to be that age and remember his death.
My father was a good man. He cared for a lot of people and helped them where he could. Like many father and son relationships there were good times and bad times. He was very controlling and his caring was often done in a controlling way. I remember the time he tried to sort out repair to my car without consulting me. Yes, I was pleased that he cared but really annoyed that he didn’t talk to me about it. It was, after all, my car!
I remember another time when he came up to me and gave me some money to help with the cost of visiting my parents… ‘Don’t tell your mother about this’, he said. I tried to say no, I didn’t need it, but he insisted. Then later my mother came and tried to give me some money to help with the cost of visiting my parents… ‘Don’t tell your father about this’, she said. I didn’t need it, but she insisted, and I could not tell her that my father had already given me so money!
My father had always been a religious man. More so than I am myself. He was dutiful in his prayers and in reading the scriptures. But I always felt his relationship with God was somewhat distant. God was out there… a long way away. You said prayers, or rather you recited prayers.
Then my father got cancer. He was ill for a number of years fighting it. It was terrible to see him deteriorating. But it changed him in his attitude to God. I remember visiting him in hospital once. He asked me to pray for him. Not ‘say a prayer’ but to talk to God and ask God to heal him. His relationship to God had changed. No longer did he see God as distant, but saw him as someone intimately involved and loving him.
My father had a poem he particularly loved and that expressed this intimate passion for God that he discovered while he was dying. That poem is called ‘Footsteps in the Sand’ and for this season – the Mercy and Forgiveness Season – we have turned it into a video so you can share it too.