Dad always has words of wisdom for me and for all his family: lots of words, and lots of wisdom.  When he says, “You know, Rog…” I know a sermon is coming, and I flinch and tighten and brace.  We are eternal beings of tremendous power.  We are not weak beings sent to earth to become powerful.  We are powerful beings sent to earth to learn humility and love.  Love is the greatest power in the universe.  By refusing earthly power and choosing kindness and humility and love, we demonstrate to God that we are worthy of the greater power he wants to give us in the eternities.  I have asked myself many times why I have this ungrateful selfish resistant reaction, when his words are so gentle and so profound and so true.  Yet, every time, I cringe.  God has given us the secret for knowing how to live in this mortality.  He has told us that we can put our trust in whatever leads us to do good, to be fair, to walk humbly.  Pursuing the spirit of goodness, we will find that God will share himself with us, will enlighten our minds, with strengthen our spirits, will fill us with hope and joy.  We can always trust impulses to do good.  I have been listening to Dad’s impromptu sermons for decades, and have been recoiling for just as long.  After a particularly good sermon to which I was particularly stiff, I doubled down to answer my own question.  And the answer came.  Putting my emotional walls up is a self-protection mechanism.  I do not need protection from the message or its delivery, for the messages are redeeming.  But I have discerned my problem: hearing Dad’s expositions hour upon hour, day after week, month after year, I often feel both tired and trapped.  Jesus said, “He that sent me is true.  I do nothing but what the Father has taught me.  I do always those things that please him.”  We can trust God the Father, for he is true.  We can trust Jesus the Beloved Son, for he does and says only what the Father instructs him to do.  I love the Father and the Son for being true and trustworthy and loving and good.  I love a good chocolate chip cookie, homemade, with butter, brown sugar, pecans, and Ghirardelli dark.  I can easily eat three or four or five, with ice cold milk, in one sitting.  In fact, just dispense with dinner and go right to the delectable dessert.  Dad’s teachings are similar to my cookies: rich, sweet, and satisfying.  But I am immersed in them constantly, whenever Dad and I are together.  Were I to forego dinner every evening, and be required to eat only the most delicious cookies instead, unable to seek other food, soon I would grow weary, reluctant, resisting, resentful, and even ill.  The analogy is imperfect, but simply put, I may have too much of a good thing.  Jesus knows us intimately and infinitely.  He ascended above all things.  He descended below all things.  He is in all things, and through all things, and round about all things.  This describes his atoning sacrifice, because of which he comprehends all things.  He knows us.  He is there for us, working within us, at every moment of our existence, wanting to bring us to him.  One day, Dad will be gone, his voice silenced but in my journals, where I have recorded his sermons and stories.  And my world will seem achingly empty and bereft.  I will miss his teaching above all things.  I think I’ll have another cookie.

(Image by pixel1 from Pixabay.)