Showing the Love: A Celebration of My Dad

Romans 5:1-11
Father's Day
15 June 2008

I am not much of a holiday person, for reasons too numerous to list but that boil down to the fact that I think the reality of holidays rarely lives up to the hype. Still, I recognize the importance of celebrating the great people and events who have influenced or made our lives possible. Thus, I am offering a tribute to my dad Leonard M. Callahan. My dad was commendable for many things: he was a faithful provider (more than 40 years mining coal to make his family's ends meet); he was an honorable man who was a leader in the community; he encouraged me and celebrated my accomplishments; and he showed me the value of faith and family. In so many ways, I am his child. One thing he wasn't, though, was verbally affectionate. He was of the "old school," a stoic man who believed in showing rather than telling feelings. Day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, with clockwork consistency he showed his family how incredibly loved we were.

As I read this text from Romans 5, I couldn't help thinking that God too shows more than tells us of God's love. Oh, that is not to say that the scriptures lack verbal expressions that God loves us, but really the way in which God proves God's love is the fact that Christ died for us, so that God could live in us. Far more perfectly than any human parent, father or mother, God daily provides all that we need - new mercies emerge every morning.

I guess my dad really knew what it meant to be a Christian, to love not in word only but also in deed. After all, the scriptures teach us clearly that we are to grow up into the image of our God and learn to be followers of Christ as dear children. We too are called to show the love.

Sing, "Great is Thy Faithfulness"

Let us pray:
Precious Lord, on this day set aside to honor our earthly fathers, our minds center on your unending faithfulness. As good as some of our dads may be, none of them is perfect. And so we remember and rejoice that we have you, even when our parents forsake us. Grant us the grace to resemble you and your loving ways more and more, so that others may come to know your grace and mercy, upon which we so rely. Amen.