Friday, February 29, 20008

How Will They Know Series

 

1 Corinthians 13:5  “Love…keeps no record of wrongs.” 

 

A Leap of Forgiveness

 

Today is leap day, an extra day in our lives.    It is a day in which the year consists of not 365 days but 366 days.    I wonder if we can’t use this day to have something extraordinary happen.  So I suggest,  a reconciliation, a new beginning in an old relationship.  

 

Many of you know that my dad was an alcoholic most of his life.   The saddest aspect for a family, where addiction is present, is that the person you love chooses their addiction over you.  

 

When I was in college I was riding to Forestry Equipment, my dad’s company, with my dad.   I wanted him to go to a track event with me.   My dad never saw me run in any race I was ever in.   I asked him many times to go and he never did.   It conflicted with his drinking.   At that very moment Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” played on the radio. 

 

The song basically is about a father who is too busy to be with his son.   The song tells a litany of the young man growing up as his dad made other choices.   The song comes to a point where the son is a grown man ignoring his father when his father wanted to spend time with his son.  The song ends ironically.     That day when I was in college I distinctly remember telling my dad, “When you get old I’m going to be too busy for you.”  

 

The first year I came to Spanish Fort United Methodist Church I seriously asked my Dad to stop drinking and he did.   He went to his grave with a 15 year medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous in his pocket.  His accomplishment in giving up alcohol did not mean that all my hurt at his absences immediately disappeared.  

 

As the years passed, my dad moved to Westminster Village.   Dad would call on me incessantly to drop my life and to assist him in some task.   I remember one day out of frustration I said to him, “Dad, why should I do what you want me to do now?  You were never there for me when I was growing up and I really needed you then.”  He said, “Sit down here on the bed with me, son.   I made a big mistake when you were growing up.  It was wrong of me to be so selfish.  I hope you will forgive me for what I did.  Now you have a choice.  Either you can make an understandable second mistake or you can forgive me and we can now for the time we have left, build a father-son relationship.”  

 

That conversation was one of the most pivotal conversations in my life.   I forgave him and we had some interesting years as father and son together.   The last thing I ever heard him say to me before he died was “Son, I love you.”  And I said, “I love you too, Dad.”  

 

I want to propose to you this leap day, that is an extra day in our lives, to ask someone to forgive you and to begin again with the past forgiven and the future a real possibility.  

 

Prayer:

Dear God, help me to forgive and take a leap of faith.  Amen.