God Shows Up

When I opened up the Sunday School curriculum and learned that this week’s Sunday School lesson was on Acts Chapter 17, The Altar to an Unknown God, I shed a tear and immediately pointed up and thought, God, this is YOU and repeated the words I heard a pastor once say, “You are definitely here showin’ up and showin’ out!”

My parents divorced when I was four years old.  I have wanted nothing more in my entire life than for my father to love me:  http://morninggloriesbypambullard.blogspot.com/2013/08/were-you-loved-enough.html

Along with the life hurt of divorce and other tragedies, my father has become a truly bitter person.  So much so that his words can cut your heart into a million pieces in a flat second.  It seems to be a self preservation method for him.  No love, no further pain.  But no love also blocks out any hope of true joy.  I'm honestly not sure he knows how to love at all and certainly not love deeply.

I have come to follow a pastor at a church in the Houston area who has the same story as I do.  His parents divorced when he was four years old, he never really knew his father and yet he somehow finds comfort in his life now by journaling.  At the end of every day he writes “Dear Dad, I wish you could have seen…or heard…or experienced this with me today.”  Oh, how those are my feelings too!  I attended his church one evening knowing that God had a word for me through him.  His sermon was on Acts Chapter 17, The Altar to an Unknown God. After a beautiful service, where souls received Christ and where many who were sick waited in long lines to be prayed over, I went up to the stage.  He was walking away and with a smile I waived for him to please come back.  He was gracious and came over to me and I said, “I relate to you on so many levels.  Thank you for sharing your life and your journey about your dad.  I have the same story.”  Ironically, he has just accepted a pastoral position at a large church near my father’s home town in South Carolina. Only God.

I have taught sixth grade girls LIFE Group for a number of years and every year when sharing my life with them and providing an example of how to live by faith and not by sight, I explain that I don’t know how God will do it, but I know that He will reunite my dad and me before he dies.

But more recently, I have felt God saying to me that I need to stop hoping and focusing on a love that hurts too much.

When Paul visited Athens in Acts Chapter 17, and he saw the altar with the inscription “to an unknown God”, he told the Athenians that they seemed very religious, and he was not sure who it was that they were actually worshipping.  They had no concept of our God of the universe because they were grasping at their gods in the universe.

I’m not going to hope or grasp.  I’m going to worship.  At the altar.  Of my God.  The one who will never leave me and will wipe away every tear.