Father’s Day in 2013

It seems like a different Father's Day to me this year. It has been a trying year.  My own dad, Eulane Walker, a compassionate and hard-working and godly family man, departed this earthly life January 9.  Within a week or two, my wife Pat lost her brother-in-law.  My dear brother Steve was then diagnosed with advanced colon cancer, and he has been in a battle ever since.  And "Stan the Man" Musial, baseball hero for young boys of the 1950s and 60s, died 10 days after my father. 

I feel so much older and “emptier” with regard to myself, and yet I feel so much richer and fuller in purpose.  It seems fitting for me to pause today and reflect about my Dad’s life and death. 

He gave unselfishly all of his life to do what he thought helpful for others – family, friends, neighbors, brethren.  The funny thing is he didn't think of himself that way.  But so it is with God’s humble servants.  They don't think of themselves at all.

He worked all the time as long as he was able - with his hands and his heart and his mind and his spirit.  Vacations you could count on one hand.  No trips to Hawaii or Florida to get away.  If he ever took a trip, it was to preach, or to go see family, or to help somebody.  He was a father and husband; a farmer, a maintenance worker, a milk hauler, a carpenter, a craftsman, preacher and teacher, and as you just heard – we didn't know it, but he was even a poet.  But ALL of these with ONE goal – to be God’s man.

I realize my bias. He had his faults, his weaknesses, his doubts, his failings.  He and I did not always see things alike.  But God is his judge, not me.   [Aren’t we all glad of that?] But in the final analysis he was a man of faith (surrender of the will based on conviction), who set his course toward God’s will and kept re-centering on it.   God tells us that is what he is looking for.  And that’s enough for me.

He and our mother were completely devoted to us children, to giving us the best they could in life from a spiritual standpoint. We quickly learned the concept of right and wrong, and it was reinforced with love and with the belt.  [Daddy didn't really get a hold of me very often.  Mother regularly took aim at my backside, but if Daddy came home to do it, it was memorable.]

But especially they attended to our spiritual development.  They taught us about Bible doctrines, the church, morality and their understanding of God’s will.  But for me, above all things, they gave me a great foundation to one day develop my own convictions, to seek and open my own heart to the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:6). 

And now to the great king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever.  I am privileged to bow before him, and to praise him, and to commit my Daddy to his keeping.