Best Father's Day Ever

Best. Easter. Ever!  It was last year - 2017. I was with my father.  While it was Easter, it was not likely that I would be celebrating Easter with him.  Our beliefs were miles apart.  Over the years, he had shown no appreciation for my faith in the Resurrected One.  The Bible that I believe to be true, he had viewed as basically a bunch of conflicting stories, about at the same level as fairy tales.

He was living in a memory care facility, not by choice.  But, since it was Easter and since he was a captive audience, I decided to read the Biblical accounts of the Resurrection to him.  He didn’t protest so I read to him for about an hour.  It was the first time that I can recall reading the Bible to him.  Yep, Best. Easter. Ever!

Then two months later, Father’s Day came around.  I didn’t spend it with my adult children; I spent it with my father.  He was on hospice care with days or perhaps weeks to live.  He couldn’t eat and was fading rapidly.  He could barely talk.  I again chose to read to him from the Word of God.  And again, he didn’t protest.

After reading to him that first morning of Father’s Day weekend, I asked his roommate if my reading of the Bible had bothered him.  He told me he was glad that I had been reading, so I read more throughout the afternoon.  The next day, when I first arrived, his roommate eagerly asked me if I was going to read some more.  I said yes and read some more, taking advantage of being able to read to a captive audience of two.   

Throughout Father’s Day weekend, I read to my earthly father and his roommate about my heavenly Father.  In fact, over the course of three days, I read all the Psalms.  I also read portions of the New Testament.  But I often returned to Psalm 23 and read it over and over again.  It seemed so appropriate to read about walking through the valley of the shadow of death to my father, a man on hospice care.

My father died a few days after Father’s Day.  It turned out that I had been reading to him in the very latter part of the last chapter of his life.  I can rejoice that, within that last chapter of his life, a portion of it was filled with hearing a multitude of chapters from the Word of God.

I won’t know, this side of glory, if what I read penetrated my dad’s heart and mind.  While I know and believe that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation, I won’t know if it brought him to a point of seeing the Savior in the same way I do.  I also don’t know what his roommate heard and the condition of his heart and relationship with God.  But, nonetheless, I had the opportunity to read the Word of God to both of them.

Yep, Best. Father’s Day. Ever!