Father lost and found

John Reynolds: 30/12/34-23/9/85

September 23, 1985
Another day at school finished, and we were just having the register at the end of the day before going home. The Head of Year came into the room and asked me if I’d accompany her to her office. Uh-oh, had I been in trouble? But then she said we needed to walk to my mum’s workplace, which was quite close to the school. This was odd. For some reason I didn’t ask why, we walked silently. The police cars outside my mum’s office didn’t help the feeling of foreboding that was growing inside. Walking into my mum’s office, seeing the police men there, seeing the look on my mum’s face – I braced myself. As she told me that my dad had been killed in a car crash on his way to work, the floor beneath me seemed to fall away, or rather the rock on which I had based my life did, and my mum and I just clung tightly together.

December 30, 2010
I may have lost my earthly father, but in the last 2 months I have found my Heavenly Father. Which is probably an odd thing to say, for someone who has been a Christian for 18 years. I have started rereading The Forgotten Father by Thomas A. Smail the last couple of weeks, and he expresses so well my experience. He lost his own father as a young boy, and he says “Experientially it is possible to confess Christ and not live in the power of the Spirit or have confidence before the Father. All Christians believe in the fatherhood of God, but not all have entered into the confident trust and willing obedience that belief implies. And they can do so, not by being taught or exhorted but only as a result of a distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit within them. God must send the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba Father...In Christ God has made himself our Father and us his children. For that to come home to us in the power of the Spirit is one of the most healing things that can ever happen to us.” Mmm. This happened to me 2 months ago. I have always known my Heavenly Father since He opened my eyes to the gospel when I became a Christian, but I never had confidence before Him, I was always hiding behind the righteousness of Christ, so that He wouldn’t see my dirtiness. Now I have come to the realisation that the blood of Christ has actually washed me clean, and I have discovered a new-found delight and confidence in approaching my Loving Heavenly Father, and an ability to receive His love for me.

I am stunned at the way God is speaking to me at the moment. For example, last night I was led to do an impromptu bible study on the word compassion after the lovely Christina Langella posted on Facebook a comment about God’s compassion. Not only did I discover to my shame that I don’t know very well those verses that speak of His compassion, I discovered He is called the Father of compassion (2 Cor 1:3) and amazingly that the Bible proclaims “in you the fatherless find compassion” (Hosea 14:3).

I miss my dad. I miss most of all not being able to discuss my faith with him. His dad was a priest in the Anglican church, and my dad also wanted to become a priest – but returned from a liberal theological college disillusioned with the teachings there that denied the virgin birth. He loved all the bells, incense and singing in the High Anglican church, and had been a choir boy at Ely Cathedral. My dad was a brilliant pianist and I used to love to listen to him play The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. He struggled with life – we believe he had Aspergers Syndrome, and had mild obsessional behaviour, and we used to get so frustrated as a family waiting for him to join us in the car to go out as he did all his last-minute checks in the house, but he was a great dad.

Today would have been his 76th birthday. I have tears today – but they are tears of joy at finding my compassionate Heavenly Father.

 

Sing to God, sing in praise of his name,
extol him who rides on the clouds;
rejoice before him—his name is the LORD.
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families,
he leads out the prisoners with singing;
but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
(Psalm 68:4-6)