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Tonight I saw the most extraordinarily simple display of fatherly love. I was so overcome with an emotional understanding of the Father heart of God, in a way I'm not sure I've ever felt before. It was brief but powerful. While out on my 8-week road trip across parts of Ohio and West Virginia, speaking to people about Missio Deo (God's mission and heartbeat that all peoples come to know Him), I've been given the privilege of staying with families-one of my favorite aspects about these tours. I was sitting in the living room chatting with my hostess, when the Father of this particular household came home from a banquet he had attended. He walked into the room holding a big white styrofoam box, which meant only one thing-left overs. He had a huge grin on his face and looked at his wife and said, "you'll never guess what I have in here"…he walked over to his wife, opened it up and showed her a box full of prime rib. He then proceeds to beam even brighter as he considers how happy their son is going to be, as he tells her he brought it home just for him. He closes up the box, heads down the hall and calls for his son to come out of his room…there is the Father just standing there with the box in his hand, with a smile from ear to ear, just waiting for the chance to reveal to his son what he brought home, just for him. It was the most beautiful scene playing out before me. The son came out, the father gave it him, waiting with anticipation as he saw his son open the box full of prime rib, waiting for that one moment when he gets to see the pure delight of his son's reaction…and it came…"Whoa! Look at all that Prime Rib! For me? How on earth did you get so much?!"
This father knew the heart of his son, and it pleased the father so much to give his son a gift that would make him smile. I think what struck me the most was how excited the father was to give this gift…anticipating the way he would reveal the gift, waiting to see his son's reaction and just delighting in the whole idea of giving a good gift to his son. In this scene I saw the Father heart of God-but I also saw in my own heart how hard it is sometimes to see this side of Him.
I don't often blog about the "singleness" aspect of my journey, as it is a very sensitive area, but I just felt God strongly speak to me tonight, saying that He is indeed my Father who gives good gifts, who knows what delights the heart of his children, and He himself delights in giving good and marvelous gifts. Let me just a be a little vulnerable here for a brief moment…I live the single life…sometimes I live it well and love it and can't see life any other way, other times I'm crying in my room at night, wondering if there really is a man for me, if I'll ever know what it means to love someone and receive someone's love in that way…and in those moments I doubt God's goodness. Yep. You heard me right…In the joys of my single life, I exclaim how great of a gift it is to be who I am, doing what I love and being called to the ends of the earth but in the moments when my heart aches for someone to journey this road with me in life and in overseas ministry, my heart also exclaims to God, where is your goodness in this? Why are you withholding this from me? Don't you see how how my heart aches, and yet you turn your face away…another year gone and another year alone. Those are the echoes of my heart in the loneliness of the single life, in the single life of one called to the ends of the earth.
So it's in this way that God truly spoke to my heart tonight- "If an earthly father has such a heart to give good gifts to his son, and delights in his happiness, how much more so do I want to give good gifts to my children…look how much I delight in giving you all good things, Summer. Trust in my goodness, trust in my love for you as my daughter."
