A Heavenly Father who is God and a Godly Father Who Was Human

Brrrrr.  It has been nippy here for a while now.  Enough is enough!  Of course, when we have many consecutive days over 100 degrees this summer, I'll complain about that also. The cold weather (don't laugh you East Coast and Northern people!) reminded me of my previous residence in New York State (no, not New York City - I shudder to think of living there).

This morning in his sermon Brother Steve used an analogy that tied my residence in New York State together with my father.  His sermon series is "Be Encouraged" and today's subject was "You Have Hope."  It was a good sermon, I thought.

One thing stuck out near the end though.  He likened the faith we have in God to that of a small child riding on his daddy's lap on a roller coaster.  The small child is scared to death as the roller coaster zips up and down and round and round but he knows his daddy won't let anything happen to him.  If we think of ourselves as the small child and the daddy as God, you get the connection.

We need to remember that no matter what we go through in this life and how scared we are sometimes, our Loving Father will protect us from evil and take us into His house when our time on this earth is done. Sometimes when strife strikes, we temporarily forget how God cares for us.  Perhaps we need to make a point of reminding ourselves each and every day.

So, how does this tie in to my father and my residence in New York State?  It made me think what a wonderful earthly father I had.  Of course, I didn't always think of him quite that way when I was a kid.  But, looking back I can see clearly he was a wonderful father.  As I've said before, my father worked full time at IBM at a blue collar job.  Before and after work he took care of our cows - usually 1 milk cow and a couple of black Angus calves we were raising for beef.  Some people will cringe when I say we played with those black Angus calves all year until they were ready to head to the butcher - then we ate them.  But, that's how it is on a farm.  My father was very good to his cows.  See spoiled cows  for more insight on how my father treated his cows.  For several years we also had chickens that my father cared for and collected eggs from each day.  One year we had 2 pigs (Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum) - we ate them, too.

My father also had a big garden each year.  We never lacked for fresh sweet corn and tomatoes (and other things I don't remember probably because they weren't my favorites). Every winter he would feed the pheasants in our back yard and every summer they would peck the heck out of many of his tomatoes.  He swore he wouldn't feed the pheasants anymore but then winter would come around and he would take pity on them and feed them.  He was truly a soft-hearted man.

One section of our pasture was kind of swampy.  One winter my father decided that would be a good place for us kids to ice skate.  He single-handedly by hand dug out the swampy area so it would make a barbell-shaped skating area for us.  We had many days after school and on weekends during the winter when we and our friends would be out in the field skating and having a great deal of fun.

My father was 50ish before he ever married for the only time.  My mother was about 20 years younger than he.  They had 3 children of which I am the oldest.  Looking back on all my father did, I am truly amazed.  He was in his mid-50's when we moved to that small farm.  So, he was not a spring chicken when he did all the work that he did.  I don't ever remember him complaining about it.  He was a truly Godly man although I did not recognize that at the time.  I have never met anyone like him in all my 65 years but I suspect there are 1 or 2 out there somewhere.

Blessings,

Mary