Dad, It's Been a Month Since You've Been Gone: And that puts me on a morning train Today makes it one month since my dad died. He died. He did not pass on, pass away, or move on to the other side. He died and that is the reality of it all. He did profess faith in Jesus in the weeks leading up to his death, but there is no way around the ugly fact that it was death. Too often we skirt around that language to make things more bearable, but I am afraid that when we do so we are trying to cover up reality. Reality tells us that death is real and it is real because of sin.
My dad would not have denied being a sinner. Matter of fact that was the biggest obstacle for him to profess faith in Christ (from his perspective). He feared that he sinned too much, that his offenses were too great to be forgiven. And that very view point is sin as well. Paul says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth (Romans 1:18 ESV).”
My dad, knowing and admitting that I could no such thing that would cause him to stop loving me accused God of having less love for his children. He suppressed truth. He knew God was greater than he. He knew that I could do no such thing that could cause him to stop loving me. But the weight of his guilt and the power of Satan had convinced him that he had gone too far, that God could not possibly forgive all those sins in his past. Though “what could be known about god was plain to him (v. 19),” he still suppressed the truth (v. 18).
A couple months before he died, my dad tried to call me and I had missed the call. I tried to call him back later on that day, but due to his illness he missed the call during a nap. Like two ships in the night, we played phone tag. A couple days passed and I was finally able to get ahold of him. He thought I was mad until I explained we just were having “bad luck.” He went on to say, “We’ve never been mad at each other. We couldn’t be mad at each other. We might have disagreements, but we’ve never been mad at each other.” He was concerned that even I could not forgive him.
As Christians, the love we show to the world says something about the Gospel. To a greater extent, the love we show to our parents does as well. If my dad could not love me for any reason at all, it would be like saying that God could not love for the same reasons. If my dad thought that God could not forgive him, he was saying that his own love for me was greater than God’s love for all. For me to be unforgiving toward my dad in the greatest of our disagreements would be like saying that I do not love God in the greatest of my trials (which is slightly more accurate for us at times).
Truth is, though, God’s love for us is unconditional. It is not based on how good we might be or else he’d have a lot of hate stored up to fuel his wrath against us at death. There is a general love, a general desire for all to be saved. But, there is also a particular love. A love only those found in Christ can claim. For those of us in Christ, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39 ESV).
Brothers, sisters, we have hope. My dad had hope. His own love for me was a slight witness to the love God has for us and that helped him to understand the Gospel. It helped him to understand the power of forgiveness. There is no such thing in life that could ever cause God’s love to depart his children. That, my friends, is a beautiful thing.
While it has been a month since my dad passed away, I do have reason to believe I will see him again. I have hope that God’s love is so great that my dad’s heart melted at the mere understanding of forgiveness. The last couple of days leading up to his death, my dad went from fear of the unknown to losing all that fear. He was ready to escape the bondage of his sins. While I mourn his loss and wish he were here, I praise the fact that I believe he is now with the Lord. He did not know Christ all of his life, but like the prodigal son, he will be welcomed no less at the gates.
At the same time, I cannot deny the fact that I am sad. One of my dad’s favorite songs was “Morning Train” by John Prine. The second verse of the song says this:
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