Always There

I don't know what triggered the reaction. Maybe it was the rain beating against the room. Perhaps it was the melancholy music on the stereo. To this day, all I remember about the night was looking at my sister and sobbing, "I never had a father. I never had a father."

Albert deserted us for another woman when I was five-years-old. Andrea was four. We saw him only rarely the next few years until his visits stopped altogether. But it was not until that evening, more than a dozen years after he left, that I discovered I had suppressed my tears for so long.

Andrea didn't know what to say. So, she sat there and let me cry on her shoulder.

We never spoke of the incident after that night, and I buried my longing for a father once again into my subconscious. It remained there for five very long years -- years full of careless and selfish pandering to my own lusts. I gave myself over to drugs, sexual affairs, thefts, brawls . . .Whatever I wanted to do, I did.

Then, in 1972, my subconscious awoke from its slumber. Light exploded into my thoughts, filling every corner of every crevice of every forgotten memory.

The first rays pierced my darkness when a friend offered me a book about Biblical prophecy --Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. At first, I leafed through the pages with bored indifference. However, as I read the many Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah scattered throughout the book, indifference gave way to intrigue. Isaiah 7 foretold His virgin birth; Psalm 22, His crucifixion; Isaiah 9:6 told of a child who would be called "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Daniel 7, Zechariah 12, Jeremiah 31 . . . the promises wove in and around the Jewish Scriptures like a golden thread.

Then I read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. So clear was its image of Jesus, I glanced several times at the title to make sure I was reading the Old Testament, not the New.

Intrigue gave way to excitement. Understanding swept over me like an unfurled banner snapping in a windstorm. Shadows created by my father's rejection fled from the radiance of God's offer of adoption into His family. Not only did He love me, but because Jesus bore the punishment for my sins, God would become my eternal Father the moment I repented of my sins and asked His forgiveness.

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