My dad could have been perceived to be a quiet man and an introvert, but he really wasn’t. He loved people and he loved to visit. I only learned when I became an adult that Dad stuttered.
I had to learn that from others because I rarely heard him stutter. He had learned to choose alternate words in conversation if he couldn’t get the first one out. He talked slowly and deliberately, carefully choosing his words without stuttering. If you didn’t know him as a kid, you would not know how bad it was until he learned to cope with it by picking and choosing his words carefully as an adult.
As a parent and a believer, I am still learning to pick and choose words carefully. Too often our words are used as darts or clubs to defend ourselves rather than to edify others. The wonderful thing about texting and email is that before we push the send button, we can edit out the emotion and the hurtful things we often say before thinking it through.
Dad loved people and he loved to visit with people. I often found myself standing on a street corner in the city with Dad waiting for mom to finish shopping. We rarely stood there alone because people would stop and visit with him on their way by. I remember asking him, who was that? He usually couldn’t tell me a name, but he knew where they lived. I met my great Uncle Earl on that street corner.
He would take me along to visit elderly relatives. I came to know some of my great Aunts and Uncles through these visits. Aunt Esther always had some chocolate cake and coffee ready when we stopped. Farrell and Mary (grandma’s brother) ran a small restaurant in the city called Red’s. Dad often stopped there for coffee with me along. Grandma lived just down the street from us in our small rural village. When visitors came on the weekends, I would sit on the living room floor and listen to Dad visit with aunts, uncles and cousins.
As believers, we should love people too. After all each individual is someone for whom Christ died. While we don’t know who the Lord maybe dealing with about their soul, we have a responsibility to declare the hope within us to those with whom we cross paths. Often people can become an irritant to us in our busy world, rather than an opportunity to tell of the hope within us. We should slow down some and listen to the hearts of those around us.
When I trusted Christ at the age of nineteen, I became zealous for the things of God. I began to regard Dad as too laid back. In my opinion, I thought he should be more of a spiritual leader and I often had a critical attitude toward him concerning this. Then one day I found out that he was the first one in our immediate family to make a decision for Christ.
Dad attended a revival meeting in our small town back in the mid nineteen forties. It was there that he made a decision for Christ. Mom didn’t like it, but the next night of the revival meeting Dad stayed home with my two older sisters and mom attended with her best friend and they both made decisions to trust Christ as their own personal Saviour.
Dad was our spiritual leader in spite of what I may have thought in my uninformed zeal. He responded to the Holy Spirit’s conviction first and as a result had an eternal impact on the rest of us.
Are you the spiritual leader in your home? Is God tugging at your heart to make a decision to receive His gift of forgiveness and eternal life through the merit and work of Jesus Christ alone? The Scripture says that today is the day of salvation! Trust Him now.
Thanks Dad!……Happy Father’s Day!
Note: Dad went to be with the Lord within thirty days of my family moving back to the Midwest in 1994. We had less than thirty days with him after living in the southeast for twenty-two years. I had the privilege of preaching his funeral.