Christian Reflection and Prayer

God is saying, "Trust Me with your life"

You say I exaggerate the splendors of a fine
home? That the love and loyalty which gradually
take shape within a family are not worth what
they cost? Consider this incident, reported from
New York City. One afternoon an extremely
popular opera was scheduled for performance
at the Metropolitan Opera House. A famous
tenor was to sing, and every seat was sold.
But just before the curtain rose a disappointing
announcement was made. The famous tenor
had fallen ill; his role that afternoon would be
sung by an almost unknown substitute. So
the performance began, and the substitute
tenor made his entrance and sang his first
aria. Usually that solo is followed by a tumult
of applause; this time the audience sat silent.
Then something dramatic happened. A small
boy, seated in a box near the stage, rose and
addressed the singer. In a high, childish voice
audible to everyone he exclaimed, "Daddy,
you're wonderful!" Then, suddenly, everyone
was clapping furiously ... clapping and wiping
away tears. How much are family love and
loyalty worth? They are beyond price.

"My father's generosity was large, and so was
his whole soul; he was affable, eloquent, and
sweet in his conversation." Those words were
written in the year 1494 by a man named Baber,
a fifteenth century Emperor of Hindustan.

"Our father always played at being young with
his children. He was proud of us. We knew it
every day. Living at our house was nice. These
words were spoken by a man named William D.
Wilkins in the year 1956.

This was one of the most vivid of my boyhood
experiences, my first trip down into a coal mine.
My father's mine was in the process of having an
elevator cage installed so we had to descend in
a barrel. Father got in the barrel first, reached
over and lifted me in. The cable swung the barrel
out and over the center of the dark shaft, twisting
us around and around as it dangled there. All I
could see below was blackness and a tiny light
at the bottom. The engineman threw a lever. We
started to drop. In an instant the whiteblue of the
sky was gone. Father held me tight in his arms.
My heart was beating like a trip hammer. My little
world of time and space and the things I knew and
could see had suddenly been whisked away, as
though some giant hand had snatched it from
around me... but my father was there. I felt him
in the darkness . . . As the cage shot down in
the darkness, banging hard against the wet, black
walls, I could hardly catch my breath. "Don't be
afraid son," he said... the speed of the cage
diminished. A pressure came in my ears, and I
swallowed hard. A second later the black wall of
the shaft before me suddenly gave way and we
came to a stop at the bottom of the mine. Father
lifted me out of the barrel. I was as bewildered as
a boy could be; I just stood there, clung to my
father's hand, and wondered what could possibly
happen next ... It was as quiet as a mausoleum.
I could hear only the steady trickle of the mine
seepage, water dropping on the loose rock, and
father's breathing near me. Then he lit a kerosene
torch, the flame blown forward by the downcoming
current of air from the shaft behind us. He took a
better grip on my hand in the dark and told me to
follow him. Stooping low, the shale roof pressing
down on us and the walls of coal pressing in on
us in the darkness, father led the way along the
tunnel toward the yellow dots of light ... There in
the mine someone asked me if I was afraid and I
remembered saying, "Well, I'd be awfully scared
except my father is with me." I remember my
father looking at me with a grave and yet wonderful
smile and saying, "Then you will never be scared,
son, because a Greater Father than I will always
be with you."

GOD OUR FATHER IS ALWAYS THERE

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!