You Are Going To Frame This

When I think about where my father is right now and how he arrived there the moment after his heart stopped, my own heart fills with joy.  He is home--home with the Father who loves him, home with Christ who died for him--and someday, I'll be there, too.

Now that my father is in his permanent place in eternity, I have a reverence for things that were his or were marks of his life here: the tobacco smell of his bureau, his handwriting, and his guitars.  Eventually, all these things will be dust, but they are here now and in these things I see the traces of his former presence here.

Within days of moving here to be with my mother, I was in my father's shed storing some of my boxes.  A small, square piece of white paper on a shelf caught my eye.  It was a hand-drawn pattern my father made to fashion a handle for one of his father's saws.  I took the paper and saved it, planning to frame it for my brother, who has inherited my grandfather's tools. 

 "Back Handle"

I gave the pattern to my brother for Christmas, but there was a part of me that wanted to keep it for myself.  The sketch was worth more to me than a masterpiece in a museum.  Still, I knew I needed to give it away.

This May, I moved my grandmother's desk out of my father's shed.  My dad had used it for odds and ends, so I had to put new shelves in the shed and reorganize the placement of some tools.  When I swept out the shed, I found a tattered piece of paper under a shelf.  I picked it up and when I realized what it was, I felt like weeping.  It was the other piece of the pattern drawn by my father, but two years of heat, dust and some water in the mix turned it into a little ruin.  I took the paper inside and tried to take some of the dirt off, but I knew I could destroy it with my efforts.

I felt sad that the pattern was hidden all those months and marked by time and the elements.  "Why didn't you let me find this sooner?" I asked God.  I knew the paper wasn't a big deal in the larger scheme of life; however, it was something of my dad's handiwork.  A couple of nights later, I was sitting at my desk with my eye on the pattern and thinking about how things wear out, when the Holy Spirit, in his still and small voice, spoke to me: "You are going to frame this." Then, I had an impression in my heart of how often things, marred by time and life, are redeemed by God. Though marked, they are still useful and even beautiful.  And so, I found a frame and I put my father's pattern it it.

  "Front Handle"

I am going to keep the pattern on my desk as a reminder of my father, and of God's grace, mercy and love ever-extending to his children.