The Father’s Affection
I wrote this post originally on another blog that our family kept about our adventures and misadventures in being missionaries and world travelers. I published this in January of 2020, just before the pandemic tsunami hit our part of the world. Deep down, for reasons unrelated to the pandemic, my inner world was already crumbling and I didn’t know it yet. Only three weeks prior to it, I’d finished my first painting in over twenty years. I also didn’t foresee the renaissance my soul was about to experience.
After reading this article, I realized that I didn’t clearly identify a single word that became more vivid to me through the experience of lying next to my youngest son while he slept. When I think of those moments, “affection” is the word that sums them up, both as a feeling and expression.
23 January 2020
Some people learn languages through brute force or clever pneumonic devices. But for me, for most of the Spanish words that have stuck with me, there is an experience or a mental picture attached. For example, I learned the word corazon (heart) when I went on my first teaching trip to Peru with Reaching & Teaching in 2014, before I spoke any Spanish. The teacher, Felipe, repeated this word, gesturing passionately. Concluding that this was an important word for the lesson, I asked the interpreter what it meant. Of the many vocabulary words that have coursed through my brain through the years, that one got stuck.
Similarly, when I hear the word ahorita, it makes me think of Oaxaca, Mexico. Although it means “in a little while,” that can mean twenty minutes or two days. A group of pastors told us they were coming to the training, but that they would be there ahorita. They never showed up, which only enhances the running joke. So, others who shared the experience can say, when we’re asked how long something will take, “Ahorita.” Or, when I think of ceniza (ash), I think specifically of the daily task of sweeping black dust from our floor in Costa Rica.
Words as abstractions tend to pass in and out of our minds, but words connected to pictures and experiences get lodged in our hearts and remain there.
While we were in Costa Rica, our youngest son, Lucas, who was then four years old, really struggled with the change to all-day school, which was half in Spanish and half in English. He began hitting himself in the face, he cried and screamed frequently, and always seemed distant and angry. Since he really wasn’t required by any law to stay in school the entire day, Sarah and I decided to start taking him home with us once our classes were done at midday.
His little legs moved as slow as molasses on those long walks home. But I could always speed them up when I offered to stop by the abastecedor (“supplier”, corner store) to buy Pingüinos (literally “penguins,” but little cream-filled chocolate cupcakes). Once we got home, I put him in his bed for a siesta. I prayed for him, but then I laid there next to him until he fell asleep. Not infrequently, I fell asleep for a few minutes as well.
Nowadays, being the youngest, he goes to bed before his siblings, and I’m usually the one to put him to bed. He asks, almost every night, for me to lie beside him for a few minutes. Those few minutes lying in the bed with my little boy are some of the most profound minutes I have in the day. I observe that Lucas isn’t fretful about anything, or antsy to be somewhere else. If he knows I’m sticking around, he remains still and goes right to sleep. I myself am calmed by his calmness. In his little-boy heart he knows his dad is looking out for him, just being with him. And every night, the experience draws me to the joy of my Father in heaven. The truth of Scripture sticks in my heart, even more than Spanish vocabulary, as I meditate on what it reveals about our God:
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper… Psalm 121:3-5
The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ Deuteronomy 1:30-31
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” Isaiah 49:15-16
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:1-2
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit (that is, His living, abiding presence in the Person of the Spirit) to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13
Indeed, how great is the Father’s love. As I go throughout the day, I am trying more than ever to hang onto the truth about Him and His affection for His children, which is lavished on us in the Beloved Jesus. Applying the Word of God to our moment-by-moment experiences and meditations is how the Word gets lodged more deeply in our hearts and stays there over the long haul. So then, when the dark night comes, we already know He is sticking around, He doesn’t sleep, He will carry us as a man carries His son, and He will see us all the way through to the eternal dawn.
