Workin' In A Coal Mine

I always took it for granted that my father would provide for us.

Dad always worked. He worked in coal fields and on riverboats. He once worked on a garbage truck.

Dad didn’t settle for those difficult jobs because he was not smart or because he lacked ambition or pride. My father is an intelligent and resourceful man. He was ordained into Christian ministry. He didn’t like working on a garbage truck.

Dad did jobs that were distasteful to him because he had a responsibility to care for his family. In his day, such dedication was the norm. People believed then that fatherhood required sacrifice.

I am not one of those people who believe that everything new is bad and that everything old was good.

The good old days were not always that great.

However, when it comes to the way we think about fathering, it seems we have lost a great deal since my father’s day. Even though it was sometimes used as an excuse for abuse, I believe that the traditional view of fatherhood was good and biblical. Today’s children are poorer from society having discarded the notion of father as a provider and defender.

Fatherhood certainly cost God something. St. John says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. (John 3:16) His heart was broken for us. He came to our defense. He sacrificed Himself to liberate us from the power of evil. That's what fatherhood is about. When we call God “our Father,” we bring to mind His loving provision for us. If we are fathers, worshipping a Father like our God should teach us what sort of father we should be.

Parenthood costs. It means that sometimes the right thing to do is to turn down career advancement because such a step will take too much time away from our children. It means that we should urge our churches to stop segregating their children from their parents. It means accepting personal inconvenience for our children’s sake.

We learn such things when we worship God as Father.

We have already reached the place in our One Year Bible readings when the Old Testament stories have given way to endless instructions about how to live life. Yesterday, we read the BIG TEN RULES FOR LIVING. Now we are into days and weeks of reading in which the application of God’s rules to everyday life becomes, well, boring.

Boredom is a decision though. It takes courage to pay attention to tedious instructions. Courage is that attribute of character that carries a person through situations from which he would rather flee. Fear, distaste, humiliation or boredom can cause a person to flee an important task before the work is accomplished. Sometimes, we must judge our own reaction to things and decide to override our own emotions. Doing that is called courage. We read the text because God wants us to know how to live and we will not do that by avoiding everything in life that is not to our momentary liking.

Providing for another person is a great responsibility. There will be days and perhaps weeks, when the job seems thankless and without reward. In such times, one must “gird up the loins of his mind,” as the King James Bible put it, and just “keep on keeping on.”

Those of us who had fathers who did this have a good experience with trust. We can believe that a man can endure all sorts of things to keep us warm, clean, educated and fed.

It helps us believe that a God who teaches us to call Him Father, might mean it when He says, “How can I forget you? Can a nursing mother forget her child? I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. You are mine.”

If such a God notices every sparrow that falls, I can be sure that He knows my needs before I even ask.

The Day The Music Died

On this day in 1959, American music icons Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson, all died with their pilot in a plane crash.

In 1971, Don McClean released his lament about that “Day the Music Died.”

His song is full of references to music and political issues of the times but the last verse is the one that always grabs my heart. He begins this verse with a word about Janis Joplin and her tragic life, but turns quickly to express the greatest loss of Western culture – the death of the three men he admires most, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The song expresses, in other words, the sense of ICHABOD (The Glory of the Lord has departed) that now haunts Western culture.


I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away

I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play

And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed

But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast

The day the music died
And they were singin'

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my chevy to the levy
But the levy was dry
And them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singing this'll be the day that I die


McClean aches from his loss. However, Western culture’s loss of God has a simple cause: our refusal to accept God’s instructions.

In today’s reading (One Year Bible), Proverbs 6:20 says, “My son, obey your father’s commands and don’t neglect your mother’s instructions. Keep their words always in your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you walk, their counsel will lead you.”

The “music” has died in our culture because we have abandoned the source of music. We are left with despair, discord and cacophony.

One of the things that drive people nuts when they call God “Father,” is the rules He imposes on His followers.

Many fathers have abused their role of protector, defender and provider. Many, if not most modern people, no longer believe that a father even has a right to govern a household.

The reasons for this great societal change are complex.

We have not changed our ideas about fathers because all the world’s fathers were authority-hungry, wife-beating Neanderthal beasts, as some “liberals” charge. Nor have we changed our ideas about fatherhood because all the world’s children and wives suddenly became authority-hating, free thinking anarchists as many “conservatives” charge.

Economic changes in the world system have had as much to do with our shift in ideas about fatherhood as anything else.

(Of course, covering that subject would require a book, not a blog.)

In this short reflection, I am not trying to defend the “right” of fatherhood. I am trying to understand what the Bible means when it speaks about a father’s responsibility to His house. We must understand that if we are to receive anything the Bible teaches about God as a Father.

I meet people all the time who were abused by their fathers.

The very authority I am trying to defend here has abused them.

That is sad.

A father’s authority and strength should be a great comfort to his children. Children should experience a father’s strength of character as a security. They should know He will fight for them against an intruder, give his life for them if necessary. They should know that he will never abandon them, even when life gets difficult. They should know that his rules are never given to stroke his own ego but to develop then into responsible, healthy and self-governing adults.

That is the Biblical picture of a godly father.

It is certainly the sort of father that God wants to be to us.

God’s people are a family, a very large family. This family is so large that it became a nation. The Bible speaks of both Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church this way, as a “holy nation.”

We call the father of our covenant nation – this “nation” whose God is the Lord -- king. In fact, He is the King of Kings, the Father of all fathers. St. Paul says as much in the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Furthermore, God is a loving father. However, He is not always “nice,” because “nice” is not always “good.”

God rules. He doesn’t rule because He likes to boss people around. God rules because He wants to redeem us. He wants to grow us up.

As I mentioned in my last blog, God is not a constitutional monarch; the sort of king who wears beautiful regal robes and presides over lovely ceremonies.

Our king rules His kingdom in goodness, truth and beauty. When we accept Him as our King, these qualities of His kingdom began to rule, reshape and finally transform us.

It was tragic that Buddy Holly and the others died on that plane, but the Father, Son and Holy Ghost didn’t take a train for the coast.

Every day, millions of people bow their knee and began their day be saying,

“Our Father which art in Heaven, Hollowed be Thy name.”

In Praise of Monarchy

If you worship the God of the Bible, you must come to grips with a difficult idea for modern people.

God is a lawgiver King.

Kings are pretty rare these days. The remaining ones tend to be well behaved and show up to do ceremonial things. They don’t threaten anyone. And for God’s sake, they don’t really try to rule.

God is not a modern, constitutional monarch. He rules. In fact, his law is one of His “tools” to transform us into His companions. He gives us law to help us live quality lives.

This lawgiver King is the sort of king who thinks, acts, and rules like a good father. People who submit to His law discover that it brings health and joy to the human heart. Over the long haul, even if it sometimes “cramps our style” in the short run, it lifts us into a new kind of life.

King David said, “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, more to be desired are they than gold.”

Today I may want to tell a lie, especially if I want to get off the hook for something. That’s natural behavior and If I can get away with it, who cares?

God cares. He tells me to stop.

It’s one of His Big Ten, "DON’T LIE!”

So, if I decide to tell the truth instead of lying, I may learn to face the consequences of my actions. I might even mature into an adult. (Some people do become adults, although some of us are quite old when that happens.)

If I tell the truth again tomorrow and the next day, I may began to strengthen my inclination toward veracity. I may actually develop a habit for truth-telling.

It’s a much better way to live than being a liar!

Another one of God’s famous ten laws says, “THOU SHALT TAKE A DAY OFF EVERY WEEK AND DO NOTHING”.

Can you imagine that people managed to turn this law into a burden?

By the times Jesus had arrived on the earth, there were books and books of instructions about what the Sabbath really meant; how to keep from breaking it and therefore ticking God off and so forth.

What a shame!

God just wanted us to “cool our jets” once a week. He wanted us to think about something besides survival. He wanted us to stay healthy.

If I take a day and do nothing but reflect on my life, read a book, or take a walk, and I do this every week, after several years I am going to be a different man than the workaholic I would have otherwise been. I may learn to enjoy my own company. Perhaps I will even learn to enjoy my family and friends. At long last, I may learn to delight being with God.

God gives us His law to show us a better way to live.

God doesn’t make up rules because He gets off on bossing people around. He gives rules to bring blessing and joy to the human family.

His law teaches us about a better life – a life submitted to the ways and purposes of God.

The children of Abraham received this law and promised to obey it. Alas, their intentions were good but their ability to carry out those intentions were flawed. It took them a long time to figure that out.

That’s the back story to why we have a New Testament. God law is good but we are not.

Christ came to transform us so we would delight in God’s law and live by that law simply because it was in the sincere desire of our new nature to do so.

That is the idea behind the reading in the One Year Bible this week where Jesus tells the Jews: “The Kingdom of God is taken from you and given to another.”

Of course, the kingdom we have is open to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. Most of us have discovered by now that we don’t do any better keeping the law than the Jews did.

Nonetheless, the law is good and reaching for its high standards and failing is still better by far than not having those standards.

Today is the feast of St. Brigid. She was an early Irish Christian who converted from Druidism. When she discovered the good news about Christ, she was delighted to acknowledge Him as king. Like all of Ireland, her life was utterly transformed.

In 1968 on today’s date, Vince Lombardi resigned as coach of the Green Bay Packers. His laws and coaching skills are legendary. The players were delighted to accept his authority because they knew they would become different after exposure to Lombardi’s training.

That’s what Brigid discovered, 1500 years ago today.

He’s a good King!