Dad and the Sawmill

He eased the old pickup into the driveway, the tires scrunching to a halt on the gravel. Switching off the ignition he just sat for a moment, his body still feeling the vibration of the rutted road that led from the lumberyard in town seven miles up the hill to his farm.

He rolled up the window, pulled the door handle and swung his legs out to the driveway. The summer breeze felt almost cold against his back where he had sweated through his shirt. He shoved the door shut and leaned against the truck. Removing his battered straw hat, he mopped his brow with his sleeve. His thinning hair, damp from the day's work, was molded to his head, and his gold-rimmed glasses were flecked with sawdust and dried sweat.

Working at the sawmill hadn’t been his first choice. A lot about the last few years hadn’t turned out the way he had hoped.

Dad and the Murdered Calf

Our culture has changed dramatically since I was a boy. One place I notice change is in parenting. Our culture challenges fathers in ways it never challenged me when I was a young dad. Young men today hear strident voices telling them they are responsible for all of society’s ills. Toxic masculinity, inherent male chauvinism, clueless gender roles, are a few of the grenades lobbed their way. I know the young dads today are up to the challenge. But as I remember my own father, I can't help but think that the current generation might learn a bit from him. So I’ve decided to do a few blog posts about him. This first one I posted in slightly different form some years ago. 

The Boys in the Boat

The Boys in the Boat is an amazing book. The author, Daniel James Brown, made me interested in a sport I never cared about – rowing. I came to admire the young men – they called themselves “boys” – who rowed to Olympic gold in 1936. I was mesmerized by the story of nine young blue collar guys with no money, no college scholarships, and seemingly no chance, who stuck it to the Third Reich and struck a blow for liberty, impossible dreams, and American exceptionalism.

They rowed for the University of Washington, but they did all of America proud. They came up when America was down, mired in the Great Depression, with millions out of work. Hitler’s Germany was on the rise, and the Berlin Summer Games was a propaganda colossus engineered by Hitler and Goebbels to assure the world that Germany was no threat to anyone.

An Angry Mob and the Power of Prayer

The little family heard the mob before they saw them. The angry voices seemed random at first, like a dispute in the marketplace or hot-headed men arguing over a traffic accident. But then the volume of Arabic words grew, shouted in unison by more and more voices.

As Christian missionaries they understood the risks of living in a Muslim country, but their home was in a good part of the city, just a few blocks from one of the royal palaces. Then the horror of seeing the chanting mob marching toward them confirmed their worst fears.

Was Mom Proud?

My mom had her heart set on my having a dual career as an attorney and an accountant. She had endured the privations of the Great Depression, and it forever changed the way she looked at life. She wanted to make sure that I had a job that guaranteed financial security.

You can imagine how hard it was for her when I came home from college and began talking about going into the ministry. Mom was so determined to thwart this foolishness that she telephoned one of the professors at the seminary I planned to attend. She made an appointment to see him, flew from Western Colorado to Denver, and confronted him on the foolhardiness of her son's becoming a pastor.

A gracious man, the professor admitted that most people in ministry don’t find financial success to be their main career benefit. In time Mom resigned herself to my calling. But it was never a comfortable fit for her.

It’s tough when your family doesn't really believe in you. Most of us want to hear, “I’m proud of you,” from our parents, but many of us never do.

I admire Jesus’ perseverance in the hard road He had to walk, even when His family thought He was crazy. Early on, when the crowds began to gather around Him, here’s how His mother and brothers reacted:  And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

You can say it didn’t bother Jesus. He was God, after all. But in His true humanity, I have no doubt it was another heartache. Even a perfect Son wants His family’s approval.

And of course the infinitely greater rejection was coming, that moment when His Heavenly Father turned away from Him.

How grateful we are to a Savior who endured all this, the loneliness, rejection, and misunderstanding, to complete a mission for sinners like you and me.