Happy Father’s Day to the fathers! Your love is so very important to us! It is the first understanding we have of our Heavenly Father’s perfect, eternal love; we come to know of Him through the daily experiences we have being yours.
I want to share a story about my daddy that illustrates this.
When we were still small children, every Saturday night, my siblings and I would play a family game of Hide-and-Go-Seek in the Dark. The rules were pretty simple: every light in the entire house had to be extinguished, every curtain drawn, every mechanical light covered. Thus, we purposefully plunged ourselves into absolute blackness.
Next, we would gather in a bedroom that acted as base, count to one hundred, and wait while Daddy went and hid.
I should pause here and describe my dad’s physical characteristics to you. He stands over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and long limbs, but he seems even larger when compared to my 4 foot 11, 90 pound mother. To a small child, Daddy is a giant. He has a deep, resonating voice, and his steps are firm and measured when he walks. To a small child, he even sounds like a giant.
Now when we played this game, we would search the whole house without our eyesight. We stayed in a huddled clump of children, knees shaking, blinding feeling our way through black rooms and even blacker closets. Most of the time, we were absolutely terrified.
When we found Daddy, he would roar and we would scream as he grabbed us mid run and tickled us to exhaustion. Maybe one or two siblings each round could run fast enough back to base to avoid being caught by the tickle monster.
But I was never that sibling.
In fact, I was the sacrificial child. My older siblings would speak silky words to me, promising me that Daddy wasn’t in that closet. When I became too smart for that, they would just shove me into the blackness as bait. And to this day, I have a hard time being in the basement by myself. I blame my siblings.
It became our favorite game, and our love for each other grew in the challenge and laughter and surprise of it all.
There was, however, a turning point for me--a moment when I began to be the winner.
Eventually, I came to be unafraid as we sought after Daddy. It was Dad, after all, that we were seeking in the dark for, and I knew that no one loved me better or deeper than he did. And if--heaven forbid--in the searching, I should run into an actual boogie monster, all I had to do was yell and Daddy could easily rescue me because he was there in the darkness, anxiously waiting to be found. He wanted us to find him.
After a while, I became so trusting in my Daddy’s love and so brave in my confidence in his ability to save me that I would saunter into dark abysses without any concern at all. I was bold and daring; I would leave the pack of scaredy cats and rush room to room, eagerly searching for Daddy. When I would find him without the others, he would pull me into his safety and we would both wait to scare my siblings. This was the ultimate reward for me, and I wholeheartedly sought after Daddy’s presence and safety with every round.
Family life is designed to teach us lessons about our Heavenly Father, especially His characteristics, His priorities, His power, His peace, His plan. I can’t help but see the parallels our game has to this life.
We have chosen to take the plunge into the uncertainty of mortal life. We are here as siblings, blindly waving our hands about in the dark, trying to find the path to God. There are moments of sheer terror, unwelcome pushing from others, unknown paths, silky words that intend to confuse us, and shadowy closets. Sometimes our knees shake and our faith fails us. Some experiences are so hard that we purposefully try to avoid ever being in risky basements of troubling doom, even though we must pass through them to achieve the objective. We feel alone and forgotten in a sea of adrift crybabies. There are even some moments so dark that we feel that it is impossible to ever win the game, and we question why in the world we are even playing this game in the first place.
BUT, like there was for me in our childhood game, there can be a turning point for all of us--a light-filled moment when we realize that we have the potential to win this game of Seeking in the Dark.
This is the moment we come to know for ourselves that there was a sacrificial child.
Jesus Christ has experienced all threatening, overwhelming blackness, and He has experienced it all through our unique set of challenges, insecurities, fears, and doubt. He has conquered all the darkness that the adversary ever can gather, and He has promised the reward of happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. Any one of us can have JOY.
We have only to seek Him.
And I testify that He wants to be found.
He has commanded us: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
He has promised us: “Draw near unto me, and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
He has assured us: “I will not forget thee; I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”
In His infinite love, He will never force us to come to Him. We must make the journey through the darkness to Him. We must seek Him--deeply, daily, devotedly, diligently.
We will not find the Lord and His promised peace and joy in criticism, doubt, sin, comparison, unrighteous judgement, disobedience, distraction, mindless wandering, or misplaced priorities. I know this for myself.
Conversely, we WILL find the Lord in obedience, self-reflection, remembering, repentance, forgiveness, worship, pure love, proper priorities, stillness, and second chances--including second chances for ourselves. I know this for myself.
Every time I have sought the Lord for comfort, healing, correction, direction, peace, safety, assurance, knowledge, deliverance, and blessings, He has kept His promise to me. Every time I have sought Him diligently, I have found Him. I know personally of His power, His promises, His priorities, His peace, and His plan.
I bear my witness that through our Savior, we can approach the throne of ourHeavenly Father--no matter the darkness that surrounds us or the basement of doom in which we find ourselves. He can be found.
This Being we seek for is real. He is our Father. He knows our names. He loves us best. He stands ready at any moment to answer our prayers for deliverance from real live monsters of sin, jealousy, hate, doubt, fear, and uncertainty. The more we seek after His presence, the greater our joy will be. We will have greater confidence to walk into dark abysses--even the shadow of death--because of our trust in His presence and love. Through Him, we will ultimately overcome all darkness.
I pray that we may all seek after His embrace and know for ourselves that His love and joy are real; that we will come to trust and love Him as our very Father.
