Shade Tree Wisdom 9/29/10

On the sunny, but cool fall Saturday morning, they had come to town to do some shopping and now were waiting to pick up the Mother and maybe have lunch at the Coffee Cup and then go back home. Now the father had parked in the shade of a little park with his son. They were watching ducks in the pond, and hearing children on the swings, and the son asked, “Dad, why are we here?”

“My chance to do a little teaching here” the father thought. And so he started with the creation, and how Adam and Eve had been disobedient and so had fallen into sin. And how Jesus Christ had then rescued us from this sin by dying on the cross. He went on for a while and then asked,
“Does that sort of answer your question?”

“No,”, the son said, “I want to know why we are we here when we were supposed to pick up Mom from the beauty parlor thirty minutes ago?”

Now that sort of thing never happens to you, does it? I know the mother will be a bit upset for having been kept waiting, for no reason, it turns out, except he forgot! But it’s the sort of thing that happens, and years later they will recall it with a fond smile.

Because it’s one of those circumstances that happen in life which can and does have a lasting effect, either for good, or bad. For either Mom treats it as a thing that happened, or she treats it as a forgetting that she will never allow him to forget, and throws it around in every conversation. She uses that instance as a tool to really destroy her marriage and her life.

Those negative results are so bitter that God has given us words about just this. Jesus taught us, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Then Jesus added this word, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6, 12.14

And St. Paul, writing in the letter to the Romans, says “Owe no man anything , but to love one another; for he that loveth another has fulfilled the law.” Romans 13,8. And writing to the Church at Colossae, Paul says, “Even as Christ has forgiven you, so also do ye.” Col. 3,13. And to Ephesus this, “. . .forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4,32.

So, when son asks, “Dad, why are we here?”, remember to pick up your wife and go have a nice lunch at the Coffee Cup and go home, loving one another. That is what God blesses, and what adds the sweetness and joy to your life together, making it stronger and richer.

GPD 9/30/10