Just as if...

I know that I am a little late in posting something about Father's Day, but it just has to be written.

A little more than a week ago I was standing in the machine shop that my dad now manages watching him program a Masak CNC lathe. The man is absolutely brilliant when it comes to mechanical stuff! I don't think that it hit me then, but it has certainly hit me now. A little more than 25 years ago I had stood in the machine shop that my dad owned at the time and watched him work on a Masak lathe that was not computerized. It is funny how life seems to come full circle...

In the two and a half decades that had passed, a lot had transpired. Needless to say, I was not a well adjusted teen or twenty something! There were a lot of words, behaviors and choices that got lived out in my teen and twenty-something years that got in the way of my relationship with my dad (not to mention my relationship with God). Suffice it to say, we spent a good number of years not talking to one another.

One of the issues I wrestled with back then was my alcoholism and drug addiction. When I finally hit rock bottom (I will save the gruesome details for another day), I ended up in an in-patient facility for a little more than a month. This sentence, so to speak, was followed by almost 2 months of intensive out-patient treatment. After more than a year of sobriety, I was at a place in my "steps" where I had to make my amends.

I still don't remember the first conversation or two with my dad very well. What I do remember, however, is that dad invited me to go hunting with him...something I never got to do as a child/youth/young man. It was that year in south Texas that things dramatically changed. As we got the camp set up and cooked some dinner, dad and I began to talk. I got around to apologizing again for my behavior and choices and for all the things that I had done when I was younger. He followed up by apologizing for some things as well. What struck me was when he said, "what's done is done. Our history begins right here, right now."

The conversation that I had with my dad that year was accompanied by a similar conversation that I had with God. In hindsight, I can almost hear God saying, "You are forgiven. What's done is done. Our history together begins right here, right now."

The outcomes of both conversations are nothing short of miraculous...

I have been rereading the Acts of the Apostles recently, and began a sermon series this past Sunday on Father's Day from this book of the Bible. All of the above recollections began to wash over me as I was preparing for this sermon on Acts 5:1-8. The verses that kept standing out to me were verses 1 and 8: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and, "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

I couldn't help but remember that justification was once described to me as "God treating us just as if nothing ever happened; not because of what we have done, but because of what God has done in God's self---in the person of Jesus Christ---purchasing us and redeeming us from ourselves." Just as if nothing had ever happened; what a great thought!

While there are many kernels of truth within these 8 verses of scripture, perhaps none is so profound to me today as the thoughts around justification. I came to realize that my earthly father--my dad--was exemplifying Godly justification (whether he knew it or not). You see, in the years that have passed since that first hunting trip, he has treated me just as if there were no other history. He has mirrored grace and mercy in ways that are still reaching me today.

As I think about my dad, and how grateful I am to have him in my life today, I am reminded that our relationship is a gift from God. We are justified in each other's eyes, not because of some excuse or substantiation we have made about our past behaviors, but because of the grace-filled gift of a second chance that is wholly God given.

I am also reminded, this Father's Day, that I have been justified in my heavenly Father's eyes because of his mighty acts in Jesus Christ. Where once there was baggage riddled with trouble, there is now a peace and a rekindled relationship that dwells at the heart of my every breath. Thanks be to God.

So I say to my heavenly Father and to my earthly father, happy Father's Day.