...and a story

Dear Reader,
I have been hesitant to post this story and waited a couple of days but somehow I can't get around it.
I've been thinking about this since I listened to the book of Romans.

It was the week before my 10th birthday. I was eager to get home from school in the afternoon. It was a rather warm day in May; the sky was blue and life wasn’t so bad, at least on that day.
I came into the kitchen and saw through the bedroom door my mother sitting beside her sewing machine in front of the window.

-          Take your bike and go to the bridge and see what all the commotion is all about, she said. People are running back and forth on the road, and have been doing it for the past hour.

-          No, I don’t want to … I need to do some homework.

-          It doesn’t take you long to get there and back, …

-          I don’t want to go, I said and went outside.

My mother was angry, but I refused to obey.

Soon enough we learned what all the commotion was all about. A woman next door came and told my mother that there had been an accident and a few minutes later a stranger entered into our kitchen. He introduced himself as the chief of police from the nearby town and in one sentence he told my mother that her husband was dead. He had drowned while floating timber down the river.

My spontaneous reaction was “Oh no, and he wasn’t saved!” 

The policeman looked at me with a strange expression; excused himself and left the house. Other neighbors came and silently discussed how it could have happened … the accident.

Somebody said an uncle and other men from the village were searching for my father’s body; dragging hooks on the bottom of the river with boats. It took hours but finally late that evening the body was found and transported on a tractor trailer to our house. One of my aunts said I should follow her home so I didn’t have to watch the men carrying my father into the house. After an hour at my aunt’s house, my mother called and said I should return home. It was the longest walk I’ve ever done.

I didn’t know what to expect when coming into the house but my mother took me into the living room where a row of chairs stood in the middle of the room and my father’s body was stretched out on those chairs. I didn’t dare look at him but wanted to hold my mother’s hand because I was scared but nobody cared or comforted me. My whole body felt like it became consumed by fear. Nobody ever gave it a second thought what a trauma this was to me. 

My father lay on the chairs in the living room that night while my mother and I slept in the bedroom behind the kitchen. Next day the undertaker came and moved the body into a coffin. It was custom to “sing the dead from the house” and neighbors and relatives started to arrive. Soon the whole house was full of people everywhere. I hid in the bedroom and I felt totally alone although I was surrounded by people wherever I turned. I could hear that a pastor came; he said a few word; my grandmother recited a psalm, they all sang a hymn and the undertaker and his men carried the coffin to the black funeral car. Neighbors, relatives and my mother huddled together in the few cars that were available and followed the funeral car to the chapel where the coffin would stand until following week when the funeral would take place.

I was told to stay at home with a cousin as “babysitter”. 

And so I fell ill and on the day of the funeral it was decided that I should stay at home. My mother came home from the funeral dry eyed; and never mentioned the funeral or those past days after that day and I didn’t ask.

But many years later my mother suddenly brought up the subject and told me that during the week before the funeral, she had prayed to God that he would give her a Bible verse that could bring some light over what had happened to my father and when she reached for the Bible it fell open to Romans 8 verse 1-2. It convinced her that my father had been saved before he died.  She also told me that when the men had lifted him up into the boat his hands had been folded as in prayer and they could not take them apart.

When she told me this I remembered something else from my childhood. 

My father often went to auctions and came home with various items that could be classified anywhere between trash and treasures, and one of those items was a huge family Bible. My father told my mother that he was going to read this Bible from page to page during a year. She didn't believe him but he started to read and I remember him sitting with this Bible in front of him in the room full of those auction bargains. He never confessed faith in God and only once he accompanied mother and me to a church service. It was strange to sit beside him in the pew, and at one time during the service I looked up into his face and tears were rolling down his cheeks. I dared not say or do anything and nobody ever mentioned his tears but maybe God had that once – in – a – lifetime chance and touched his heart. 

My father was a troubled man and my constant prayer prior to the day he died was “Please God let father die before mother because I don’t know how I could live with him.” Eventually a child’s prayer was heard.

I have fantasized about how it would be if my father was alive today and now as an adult I could confront him about things that went on in my childhood. What his answer would be when I asked him why he thought he had a reason and the right to beat my mother. Why he hated me so much a certain evening when I accidentally locked him out of the house and didn’t know how to turn the key backward. Why he screamed on top of his lungs through the door so even my mother who was in the cow house heard him. She saved me from his rage but I never forget the anger in his eyes. Why it didn’t seem to cross his mind that I was only a child.  

Maybe I would ask him about the Bible reading and if it had any impact on him. Did it open up his heart to Jesus?  I will never get an answer and I will never get the chance to ask but I know one thing for sure; God's mercy was sufficient for my father, no matter how he had lived his life.

I have listened to many Bible studies about the book of Romans. It has been turned inside out and analyzed by many scholars but now that I think of it this verses in chapter 8 sums up the book;

“Therefore, there is no longer any condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Yeshua.” (from Complete Jewish Bible)

When cold deep water surround you and you know this will be the end of your life I think the shortest way to salvation is “Help me Jesus!” Not much time to think about the right way to ask for salvation. Not much time to put ones act together. Not much time for anything else but “Save me Jesus!”  My father's folded hands speak of a possibility that in a split second the shortest prayer to God: “Jesus!” can bring a soul into eternal fellowship with God.

Sincerely yours, Ida