I was thinking about my parents this morning. I was overwhelmed with a great sense of thankfulness. I have been so blessed with a rich and deep, godly heritage. My parents were and continue to be prime examples of following after God. They are living an honest life of service and love.

I was thinking of my father specifically. I had just been reading a fine work of theology by a highly esteemed theologian. I began to consider his life alongside the life of other godly men I have had the privilege to sit under.

I am a pastor’s kid-all my life-and now, as an adult, when other parents of adults are retiring, mine are starting their second career. They became foreign missionaries.
We were not a typical family. We marched to the beat of a different drum. In a world of craftsman homes, dual incomes, 2.5 children and the get-ahead-in-life mentality, our family stood in stark contrast. We were a family of 10, with one small income, a mother devoted to her husband, children and volunteer work for the less fortunate. A father consistently devoted to the study of God’s Word and applying it to his life, tirelessly serving the church body and raising 8 children in the way they should go. We had nothing and yet gave freely of ourselves to others. Because of the attitude of service and giving that prevailed in our home, we assumed that we were the more fortunate and others were in need of what we had. I didn’t realize until I was older how this flew in the face of the actual circumstances. My father supported his family on about 14,000/year. By the world’s standards, we were the poor and less fortunate, and those we aimed to serve were usually well above our means. Thank God for the priceless mindset I learned as a child. The world’s economy is backwards.

As a teenager, I wanted to be just like every other kid. How shallow and self-centered I was. I was embarrassed of my dad at times. He was a quiet man. He was a humble man. He was a hillbilly from the mountains of Virginia, with a soft southern drawl. At that time in my life, I equated greatness with things like eloquence of speech, position, power, assertiveness and authority.

When I went away (far away) to Bible College, I rubbed shoulders with (by Christian Academic standards) important men- men who were professors of theology, pastors of large churches, authors and authorities on important issues. But as I watched their lives, I could not help but compare them to the man I knew most intimately. Often in these men of standing, I would not always see qualities that I had known and experienced in my dad. Some men expected respect, my father never expected it, and when he did receive it, he seemed to be wearing something that didn’t fit. God’s grace to my father was never expected either, it was always accepted with the awe and wonder, that he, being so unworthy, would receive such a valuable treasure.

My father lived a life quietly running after God. He isn’t a sprinter. He doesn’t stop and start. He’s a distance runner, steady, disciplined, and consistent. He will, I am sure, be running with his very last breath. Men I have known, go through life acting as if they expect fanfare to meet their every endeavor, their race is run from accomplishment to accomplishment with parades of accolades in their wake. I don’t recall my father ever looking or expecting to receive praise. Instead, he was looking for where God was leading and how he should spend the time and opportunities he was given. Many men of noteablilty live as if they realize the world is watching them. My father seemed to live as if there was no one watching him, and all he was watching was something unseen by human eyes.

I have heard many leaders place great value in knowing themselves. There are hundreds of books and self-evaluation tests for your spiritual gifts, leadership style, personality traits, character qualities, and behavioral patterns. It seems to be very important to know whether you are introverted or extroverted, type A or type B, organized or creative, literal, analytical, co-dependant, charismatic, phlegmatic, diplomatic, dominant or orthodox. Never once did I hear my father preach on these things. I knew my father very closely and I cannot tell you whether or not he is introverted or extroverted. He is neither. He loves Jesus Christ and emulates Him so closely that one cannot know who HE is apart from Christ. He loves others and serves them as if they were Christ. He doesn’t seem to worry about whether his “love tank” is full or empty, whether he is drained emotionally or socially. I remember my Father going to bed completely spent, but never saying he was tired. I remember seeing him spending hours studying, then going to the hospitals and spend hours ministering to those who were sick, then going to church and spending hours counseling people, arranging chairs, cleaning toilets, changing light bulbs (he was, by default, the janitor too), then going to an elderly members house and hoeing his garden because the man was too weak to do it. Then he would come home mow the lawn in the dark, take out the trash etc, silently doing all the chores we children were told to do but didn’t. All without complaining, all without asking for help or lecturing about doing what we were told. One time I heard my mother exasperatedly ask my father why he didn’t tell the particular child AGAIN to do what he was supposed to do. I remember my father’s response. “I want him to do it because he wants to do it, not because I tell him to do it.”

Was my Father just a pushover? Was he just one of those 1940’s dad’s who ruled silently? Was he a workaholic? An over-achiever? A simpleton? At times I mentally accused my Father of all of these, but those moments only revealed my foolishness. The truth is, I have never met a man that as closely resembles Christ in his daily, mundane, personal and private life as my father. Who he is in the private four walls of our home, who he was behind the pulpit, at the side of a hospital bed, on the top of a ladder, and on the softball field. My father is a quiet oasis of strength and dignity amid the torrent of life’s business and trials.