Please Stay

Every morning he would kiss her goodbye and disappear through the doorway to a world where metal clanked, steel melted and shaped into oven doors, and grease and grime was a way of life. I would stare at him, silently begging him not to leave.

"Please stay," my heart whispered. But ... he didn't.

When she'd become angry and furiously fish around in the closet for his old belt, he'd quietly slip away and head outside, not being able to bear watching what came next. 

"Please stay. Help me," my heart screamed. But ... he didn't.

Mom and Dad, 1984

When we would go to town and I'd opt to go with him to visit his buddies at the cobbler shop, I basked in the warmth of their voices and the easy camaraderie that they had with each other. There was no bitterness, no malicious gossip, no one-upmanship. "I better get back to the car," he'd eventually say. "She'll be done her shopping now." He'd endure the gentle ribbing about being hen-pecked. 

"Please stay. I like it here," my heart pleaded. But ... he didn't.

When I was a teen, and got into a fight with one of my older cousins down the road, I came home and told him how mean she'd been, what she'd called me. He was so angry that he stormed out of the house to make her aware how displeased he was. 

"Please stay. You'll just make it worse," my heart cringed. But ... he didn't. He went anyway, and came back even more angry. That was the moment he put a dent in the wall with his fist. I didn't know why - until later. He wanted to protect me. And my cousin's husband just laughed at him. 

The day of my wedding, I looked at him standing beside me in his Sunday best as we were just about to head down the aisle together. He seemed so strong, so dependable, just like always. "I love you, Dad," I told him. He looked down at me. "I love you too, dear," he murmured softly in his deep bass voice. He walked me toward my bridegroom, and gave me away to him, and then he went and sat down.

Unknown to me, he pulled my 2-year-old niece onto his lap and held her close. And as his own baby willingly walked out of his care and into someone else's, almost nobody saw the tears well up in his eyes and spill over onto his cheeks. 

"Please stay. Stay my baby girl," his heart wept. But ... I left. And yet ... I stayed his baby girl in my heart. I always had.

When I stood by his bedside in the hospital, watching him writhe and groan in pain he couldn't pinpoint in spite of the morphine in his IV, hearing him call out for his mama, I knew that asking him to stay would be asking his body to endure even more suffering. So I stood there ... and let him go. 

"It's okay for you to go, Dad," my heart whispered.  

And he did, just a few days later.

It's been over 20 years since that day. Yet I still feel his presence with me when I remember some wacky thing my own baby girl used to do that reminds me so much of him, and I'm so glad that she is getting to know him now. She always missed knowing him. And now the two of them are laughing together. In a way, neither of them will ever really leave, as long as I remember them.

"Thank you for staying."

It's Just Like Jesus

It's just like Jesus to take a tradition that everyone knew, and transform it into something new, something meaningful, something so far beyond what anybody anticipated.

The Passover meal (called the Seder) had finished. The Passover is all about mercy. It's all about God not giving us what we deserve - withholding His judgment from Israel.

Now, Jesus (the Jews call Him Yeshua) turns this simple Seder meal into something everyone there recognized instantly: a Jewish betrothal ceremony (a Brit). Who could have predicted that?

In a Brit, the man proposes marriage to the woman. She indicates her acceptance by drinking from the cup with him. God was making an invitation into a relationship: not based on the absence of judgment, but the presence of lavish love. It was revolutionary.

Have a look at this video which explains the connection.

In the ancient Hebrew tradition, too, it was customary for the groom and bride (so betrothed) to call each other husband and wife as soon as she said yes to his proposal of marriage, but not to consummate the marriage until after the groom had gone back home and built a room on his dad's property for him and his bride to live in.

Then when it was done, at any time of the day or night, he could come calling for her (she would be watching for him) - symbolically snatching her away from her parents' house to join him in a procession back to his father's house, and while assembled guests waited outside, the bride and groom would go inside their newly constructed home and consummate the marriage.

Afterward, they would come out and be the guests of honour at a feast, after which there would be up to a week of festivities at the father's house.

I don't need to draw a map. This, from the bread and wine straight through to the marriage supper and the seven days of celebration, is a perfect picture of God's original intention and His unfolding plan: the intimate relationship between Christ and His church, the promise of His coming, the rapture, and the marriage supper of the Lamb.

It shows the passionate desire of the heart of our God to enter into the most profound of relationships - a total union: a melding of spirit, soul, and eventually body that transcends all others.

And the price? Well, the video explains that so well : Jesus' dowry to purchase His bride was His blood... His life. It cost Him everything He had. And He paid it ...just so we could know Him, let Him into the deepest part of us, to keep ourselves only unto Him. So (starting now) He could be intimate with us.

That blows me away.

It's what I now think about whenever I take communion.