Hold the line

What about those unanswered prayers of yours? Where are they? Misplaced in a dusty file somewhere in some forgotten closet in heaven?

Sometimes it seems like it, I have to admit.

But God hasn’t forgotten the prayers of his children.

Sometimes the answer is an immediate “yes;” sometimes a prompt, “no;” and sometimes an indefinite, “maybe.”

It’s that third, last category, that brings doubt and grief to our impatient souls.

I’m reminded the little girl who was overheard praying, “Lord, Grandma still has the sciatica, Daddy still can’t find work, Momma still can’t lose weight, and Bubba hasn’t found a date to the prom yet. I’m tired of praying and not getting any results.”

We want results.

Preferably, now.

But God does not bow to our impatience, even when we pray with folded arms and tapping feet.

“In due season” the Bible says, “we will reap, if we don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9).

There’s sowing. We get that. And there’s reaping. Understood. But waiting for that due season can be unnerving and drag into what seems like an eternity.

And sometimes it is an eternity.

Literally.

I heard about a news journalist who visited the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, in old Jerusalem. She talked to a man who had been praying there twice a day for 60 years. He would pray 40-45 minutes each time, morning and evening. The reporter asked the man, “What do you pray for?”

He said, “Lots of things, but mainly peace between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I pray for all the hatred to stop and for our children to grow up in safety and shalom.”

“And how do you feel after praying 60 years for all those things?” the reporter questioned.

The old man said, “Like I’m talking to a wall.”

So, let’s face it, the wall, that is, and ask, “What do you do when you feel like you are talking to a wall?

What to do when like Habakkuk of old you cry, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?”

The best I know is: keep on keeping on.

I read about a wealthy woman who phoned the manager of a concert hall and asked him if anyone had found a diamond pendant. She believed she had lost it and was frantically calling every place she had been the evening before, trying desperately to find it.

“I’ll go and look,” said the manager to the woman on the phone. “Please hold the line.”

After a quick search, he found it. Amazed that he was actually holding the valuable diamond in his hand, he rushed back to bring the good news to the lady. But she was no longer on the line. And she never called back. The expensive jewelry went unclaimed.

Now maybe the lady was so wealthy that the diamond didn’t really mean all that much to her, so she too quickly hung up the phone. And likewise, maybe God wants to answer our prayer, but we, like that lady, have so much of our own stuff in our hands that God’s answer isn’t really worth our wait.

But I did say she was frantically looking for the lost pendant, so maybe, despite her desperation, she simply doubted, disbelieving that it would ever be found, and so she too easily gave up. We do that, too, when we move on and work out our own plans for our lives, convinced that God doesn’t care and isn’t concerned with the likes of us.

Even though he couldn’t see it or feel it, Habakkuk came to trust that God had a plan: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

God will come through “in due season,” if we don’t give up.

His Son’s resurrection reminds us of that truth, for His resurrection was never in doubt from heaven’s side, only ours.

Between His death on Friday and resurrection on Sunday---that short period of earthly time---some people must have died, still waiting for the Promise, just as others had for hundreds of years.

Our “due season” may come only in the eternal.

The best, indeed, the only thing to do is hold the line.

And not give up.

Daddy's here

The four children raced up the stairs, and then they saw him.

“It’s Daddy,” they screamed as they ran to wrap their arms around his legs. “Daddy’s here.”

It’s often the little things dads do that make the biggest difference.

In this case, Dad showed up for church to join his wife and children.

That particular dad’s presence brought immediate joy to those kids.

A father doesn’t have to say much, sometimes nothing, as in that dad’s case, to let his kids know they matter and that he believes in them.

The same truth holds for moms, but we seem to need and expect more verbalization from moms. It seems that often, just a few words from dad will suffice.

My oldest daughter who lives in New York City was home recently for a few precious days. 

I saw her, up in her old bedroom, thumbing through a box.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked her.

 “I’ve kept every note you wrote me when I was growing up,” she told me.

I looked inside later, after she left.

Most of those notes were no more than three or four sentences--- words I’d scribbled in sometimes barely legible handwriting. They often came at significant points in her life. But they weren’t by any means eloquent or awe inspiring, just simple notes encouraging her, letting her know I believed in her.

But the notes were apparently important enough to her that she has kept them tucked away in that closet all these years.

She told me that when she’s home, she often browses through them.

That’s because, I suppose, those notes collectively say, “You matter. You are significant. I believe in you.”

I have a friend whose father drove a bull dozer at a rock quarry when she was a little girl. On his way home from an often grueling day, he had the habit of stopping by a country grocery store and getting her a piece of candy or some tasty knickknack. He would tuck it away in his lunch pail, then open it for her to reach in and find. My friend would so look forward to her dad’s arrival that she would run across the bridge in front of their house each day to greet him. He would then kneel down on her level so she could reach inside the lunch pail for the prize he had for her.

She smiles and her eyes glisten as she tells the story. “His lunch pail has a special place in my kitchen today,” she said. “Every time I look at it, I think of him.”

It doesn’t take much for dads to make a difference. But they do have to be there, whether it’s simply showing up at church, taking the time to write a note, or stopping by the grocery store to buy a piece of candy.

Legendary basketball coach, Jim Valvano’s inspirational 1993 speech at the ESPY awards just eight weeks before he died of cancer still motivates people today.

His speech included this statement: “To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.”

Valvano was apparently “something special” to his dad. In fact, if you want to know who planted the seeds for a positive attitude in Coach Valvano’s life, you might consider the early influence of Valvano’s father. “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me,” Valvano said.

Believe in your kids, and not just when they make you proud: write them notes on their bad days, too; call them when they are hurting; bring them something that says, “I’m thinking of you even when I can’t be with you,” and most of all: be all there for them when you are there. In doing that, you are in some way saying, “I believe in you.”

And hopefully--- if not now---they will at some point, someday, look with fondness and tenderness in dad’s direction and say, if only in their heart, “It’s Daddy. Daddy’s here.”

Night, Night

“For the final time, NIGHT,” my mom used to admonish me as a boy when for what she called “the umpteenth time,” she would plead, “Would you just go to sleep?”

Getting me to sleep must have been a long order for Mom.

Often, Dad would be brought in like the relief pitcher in a ballgame that had gone bad.

His stern words, “Get to sleep,” weren’t meant to be comforting nor sleep enhancing. They meant, “If you can’t sleep, then just lie there and shut up.”

And so I would lie still in the silence, listening for the late night train in the distance to pass through my hometown, Altus, Oklahoma.

Now, years later, just a few weeks ago, I found that the roles have almost reversed: I was the one urging Mom and Dad to get to sleep.

Dad had carefully placed the sheets on the couch, then he kept worrying that I had not tucked them in properly. I was quartered in the room separating Mom and Dad’s bedrooms in their assisted living unit.

“Let’s just go to bed and get some sleep,” I suggested for “the umpteenth time.”

“We’d better start heading that way,” Dad once again agreed.

But “heading that way,” I learned, was a more involved process than I had assumed.

Mom is 94 and Dad is 92. It takes longer to get places, even to bed.

It takes some time just to think about getting places before the movement is even initiated to get there.

Time and again I would wake Dad, reminding him to start getting ready for bed.

Just a few weeks ago, Dad, who has cancer, had been in a skilled nursing unit and was separated from Mom.

Recently, they were reunited in the same unit.

One evening, about 8:30, he reflected with a gleam in his eye. “About now, I would start that long, lonely journey down the hallway to the ‘other place,’” he said, referring to the skilled nursing unit.

“Now, I get to stay right here with your mother,” he proudly proclaimed, as if he had come back to rescue his bride.

“Maybe that’s why he’s in no hurry to get to bed,” I thought. “He just enjoys being together in the same room with her.”

His bedroom is on one end of the unit, hers on the other. They watch TV in between naps in the living room area.

That’s where I am, on the couch.

Once, just after I had finally told them good night for what I thought was the last time and was drifting off into a deep sleep, Dad woke me: “Just checking to make sure you can sleep on that couch,” he hollered from his room, as I bolted upright.

I lay back down in the silence, listening for a train to pass through Lubbock, TX.

None.

Then, what I heard next worked better than Dad’s “Get to sleep,” when as a child, I was a sleepless in Altus.

I had gotten up to get a glass of milk, after Dad, wanting to make sure I could sleep, had awakened me.

“Night, Babe,” he shouted, calling Mom by the pet name he had given her untold years before.

I glanced toward his room.

He was waving to her from his room.

“Night,” Mom said, waving back to him from her room.

“We can’t hug, but we can wave ‘night-night’ to each other,” Dad explained, noticing that I was looking on.

Back on the couch, I heard no sound of a train.

I didn’t need one.

I was soon fast asleep, comforted by the evidence of a love whose bond spans two rooms and echoes down the halls of eternity.