Watch Me Daddy!
I spent most of my years growing up in a little town in Illinois named after some guy with the last name of Willis who had started a coal mine. The town grew up around the coal mine and flourished to a population of a couple thousand. But by the time I arrived, the mine had closed, businesses had left, and a remnant of 600 or so people were living simple lives surrounded by alternating patches of corn fields and jagged landscapes that bore the scars of being violently raped by thoughtless strip-mining machinery.
We lived in a double-wide on a couple acres of land just south of town in a little neighborhood called Dolly Hill (I assume someone named Dolly used to live there at some point). There were four of us; mom, dad, my younger sister, and me. When you walked into the front door of our home you were walking straight into the kitchen. Take a few steps and look to the right and you would have seen the sliding glass door that led into a large backyard. Look to the left, and you would be about to enter the family room; fully equipped with a color console television, an Atari 2600 system, a C.B. radio in the corner shadowed with bulletin boards on the walls holding postcards from people in far away places whose voices had at some point crackled through the radio speakers clearly enough to be able to share mailing addresses, and a big cabinet housing a AM/FM radio, turntable, 8-track cassette deck and an assortment of 8-track tapes by Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Billy "Crash" Craddock, and several others whose music still makes my skin crawl.
Standing in the kitchen with the living room to the left and the sliding glass door to the right, you would then look straight ahead and behold the architecture common to all double-wide homes of that day; the long narrow hallway leading to the bedrooms. This was the place - the hallowed ground of athletic achievement - where I would demonstrate to my parents, my grandparents, and anyone else who cared to humor me, just how fast I could run. I think I even had people clock me with a stopwatch as I would run as fast as I could 30 feet down the hall and 30 feet back . I remember one particular time I had just gotten a new pair of tennis shoes and was sure that these shoes alone would knock about 2.7 seconds off the time it took me to run the orange shag-carpeted track. I remember many times taking position at the end of the hallway and saying, "Watch me daddy," before launching like the six-million dollar man down the narrow corridor.
As kids, we want our parents to watch us perform; but only when we know we are going to perform well. Hearing the loving affirmation of a proud parent is to the soul what oxygen is to the body. I remember a lot of those times when I knew I was doing something well and loved to hear the praise of my parents. But I remember other times when I was ashamed and embarrassed for my parents to be watching. Little League baseball is a good example. I played one season and during that whole season I only got one hit; and that one wasn't quite what the coach wanted. I hit a fastball with my left eye socket. As if my baseball career wasn't embarrassing enough already, I was forced to wear this stupid looking protective helmet for the rest of the season because the doctor said my eye would explode if that happened again...or something like that.
Not only was I embarrassed for myself, but I remember being embarrassed for my parents. I could almost feel what they had to have been feeling knowing that they were surrounded by other parents in the stands who were biting their tongues to keep from saying something like, "Man, your kid really sucks."
I'm 38 years old and I still think about these things. I still enjoying hearing my parents say, "Good job!" or "We're proud of you!" But my thoughts these days tend to go more in the direction of wondering what God thinks of me. There are times when I'm happy to know that God is watching me. I pray, "Watch me Daddy!" when I'm making a strong effort to be more sensitive toward my wife. "Watch me Daddy!" is easy for me to say when I'm standing in church singing a song or when we're going to a particular passage of scripture and I'm the first one in the row to get there. When I received my ordination as an elder in the Free Methodist Church I thought, "Watch me daddy!"
But then there are other times when He is watching, but I wish he wasn't. Like the time (okay...timeS) when everything in me wanted to flip off the guy who was driving like an idiot in front of me. I would prefer He not be watching as my fuse grows shorter and shorter with "Wanda The Wonder Slug" who is taking a half hour to check out the two people in front of me at Wal-Mart. See...I just did it again. I called that cashier a name. Hopefully He won't read this blog.
What does God think of me? I mean really...what does He really, really think and feel when He observes my life, my heart, my mind. I know all of the theologically correct things to think and say. "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" (okay, that one's from a bumper sticker). But I gotta tell you, there are a lot of times that I find myself wishing that I could just meet God at Starbucks some morning and spend a couple of hours just laying it all out on the table. Surely there have got to be times when He is just flat out pissed off at me...right? That may have been a bit irreverant. See how adept I am at this?
Mike Bickle asks some of the same questions in his book After God's Own Heart. In chapter four he invites us to ponder:
"How does God feel most of the time? Is He bored? Worried? Blase? Happy? Concerned? Detached? Engaged? Mad, glad, or sad? It sounds lighthearted, but it's one of the most important questions of our entire spiritual journey. How does God feel when He looks at you? What wells up in His heart when His eyes turn upon your life? I have asked many people this quesion over the years, and they usually respond in one of two ways:
God is mostly mad.
God is mostly sad.
And in both cases, they think it's their fault. Many Christians believe very strongly that God is angry and grieved with each of us.
Mike goes on to illuminate passages of scripture that lead us to the understanding that God is not mostly mad with us nor is he mostly sad with us. He is mostly glad! Deuteronomy 30:9 says, "The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand...For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers." Zephaniah 3:17 is another that he points to, which says, "He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."
These are good. But there's another scripture that pretty much settles the issue for me. It reveals to me the incredibly understanding nature of God. It helps me to understand that there is nothing about me, my character, my weaknesses, my future sins that can surprise God. There will never be a moment when God will say something like, "Well, if I had known you were going to mess up like THAT I would never have wasted my time with you." There is nothing in my past that He hasn't seen. There is nothing in my future that He doesn't already know about. And because of that, I can rest in the reality that the same love and affirmation and acceptance I feel when singing a song in church will be unshaken in my worst, darkest moments of human frailty.
Praise the Lord, I tell myself; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, I tell myself, and never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He ransoms me from death and surrounds me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! The Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.He revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west. The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone - as though we had never been here. but the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children's children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!Psalm 103:1-18