The life and interests of…

This end of the year marks seven Christmas’ without my father, and writing that sentence really puts into perspective how long it’s been since he passed away.

I was sitting with my grandmother, she was telling me how proud both my great grandpa and my father would be of me as a father. These were men who shaped my life, and gave me a set of tools I could choose from when raising my own kids. They gave me a sense of respect for my elders, a sense of respect for the women of my life, and in the value of others.

I went home and reflected more on my family. I thought about how strange it had been, my son being born 364 days after my father’s passing, during the darkest moments of my life. I realize God blessed me in that moment. I needed someone or something, and God gave me my son. My wife’s liver stopped functioning properly, she suddenly developed cholestasis, which required our son be born early. He did not give me my son a few weeks later, as I was in the depth of my despair, but the day before. After 22 hours in labor, my wife gave me a baby boy. A gift from God, not to distract me from my pain, but to allow me to experience the fatherly love my father felt for me. My perspective on life and death changed drastically over the next year, and the darkness and despair I once felt has evaporated. It was this moment, as I was at my lowest, that God proved to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that He is true and all powerful.

There is not a thing in this world or the next that could prove to me otherwise. You could give me a mountain of undisputable scientific evidence that God does not exist, and I would choose to follow Him.

But God is very real and that should scare us all. It means we will be held accountable, that we must change the way we behave and live for someone other than ourselves. We must live in fear and trembling.

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and in fear and trembling stand, pondering nothing earthly-minded. For the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, comes to be slain, to give Himself as food to the faithful!”

Praise God in the highest, from Whom all blessings flow.