A decade now. . .

It has now been a decade since my father died.  He had only been hospitalized once and then to have his knees replaced before the dreaded words were heard:  I think you need to take me to the hospital.  He was a month shy of his 88th birthday and worked everyday until a few weeks before he died. Then he was gone.  He died about five months after my wife lost her dad.  Both of us ended up fatherless, wishing we could hear the sound of their voices just one more time.  

The death of Dad -- and then three years ago Mom -- has changed so much how I see myself.  For the whole of my life until their deaths, my identity was rooted in them, in the place and people from whom I came.  Though I have not lived in Nebraska since 1972, I still tell people that is where I am from and part of me will never cease to think of Wausa as home.  When my parents died, I soon found myself without anyone who actually remembers me as a baby or a child.  The generation that I depended upon to know who I am is gone and I have had to reinvent myself.  I am not the son of anyone anymore but the older generation now replacing those who are gone.  If I were smart, I would have paid much more attention to the family stories once told so that I could tell them to those who come after me.  In this respect, the matriculation to the older generation comes with great responsibility.  The stories of our past inform our present and shape our future.  Without them, any tomorrows will be entered without anything of yesterday to help them meet and live out the future.

Nowhere is this more true than the Christian faith.  I did not learn of Jesus from my pastor or Sunday school teachers.  My parents taught me the faith and demonstrated to me this faith every day.  This was once typical but now is more and more exceptional.  Those who walk through the doors of a church in their adulthood are blank slates.  They neither know nor can judge the faith.  They have to be taught from the very beginning.  A Christian worldview is made ever so difficult for them because the well worn pathways of the world have long ago established their thinking process, shaped their values, and defined their truth.  Part of the reason unbelief is so palatable is that this has become the default of a secular age with nothing to challenge this worldview or the version of truth that passes in the moment.

Parents pass along many things to their children.  Some of those things are good and laudable and some of those things are pretty bad.  There is one thing which has bigger consequences than therapy or unhappiness and that is the failure to speak the faith into the hearts and minds of your children.  This will deprive the child of eternity and saddle them with a curse bigger than disappointment or disillusionment.  So on this day when I remember my dad, I remember him most of all for the witness of his faith in words and example and for the legacy of faith that has defined me and my life for these nearly 71 years.