ONE NIGHT IN THE STRUGGLE! ©


With all of his school-aged children sitting around the kitchen table waiting on their mother to fill their dinner plates with food, the father commanded each child’s attention with what appeared to be an intense interrogation regarding their existence. “Who’s your God?” He firmly asked, in a strong demanding voice, as he looked around at the piece of faux-wood Formica furniture where all the kids were sitting. “Who feeds you?” He continued to inquire waiting for a response from any one of the five children.

“Who clothe you?” He blurted out ignoring the look of confusion on each one of the youngster's faces. “I’m your God!" He asserted with certainty. "I'm your God," their father proclaimed!

The 1960s family event was still fresh in the woman’s mind as she reminisced about her childhood. Although her father had gone on to be with the Lord, she oftentimes found herself thinking about the life she lived with him as a young girl. “You do,” the woman remembers innocently answering in a sing-song kind of way hoping to please the man who birthed her. “You do, Daddy.”

“I’m your God!” Her father would go on to exclaim after coming home from work by way of the neighborhood bar he frequented. “I feed you!” “I clothe you!” "I put a roof over your heads!" “I’m your God,” he ranted, glaring into the eyes of the young souls whose lives he was entrusted.

The woman, who was now several years older than what her father must have been at the time of the inquisition, often wondered if this deity proclamation was what caused her dad to be stricken with a medical condition that ultimately paralyzed him from the waist down. Why, she wondered, did he need this affirmation. Was the Civil Rights Period, in which they were living, partially to blame? Had it invoked some of the poor and degrading childhood memories he longed to forget? Was it too reminiscent a time for him? Had he hoped the Mississippi hatred he experienced as a young boy in the South be long gone and reduced to a fading memory as he worked to support the family of seven in the North?

Or did the young father just have enough that day? Was he tired of hearing about the intentional and senseless murders of innocent people robed in the same beautiful brown African skin he, himself, was wrapped up in? Was he feeling hopeless and defeated during those turbulent times of brutal beatings while at the same time proudly living in the middle-class manicured suburbs? Was it a sense of guilt because he was in the North far removed from the brutal slayings going on in the South? "What was it?" she wondered.

Was it the mortgage on the home which he and her mother paid monthly with the modest factory job wages each one earned? Had something happened to him while in the military during the Korean War Period in which he was honorably discharged? What was it? Was it too confusing a time living in the integrated neighborhood supposedly "less than" while at the same time being much more financially situated than those thinking they were "better than?" What caused him to think of himself more highly than any man or woman ought to and as a God?

“Oh, my father,” the woman thought to herself, “I don’t know what was happening with you during that period of your life when you longed to be affirmed in a way only God could have done. How I wish I could have been there for you as an adult during those turbulent times in your life as a young father so that I could tell you about Jesus Christ and how much He loves you and cares about you." The woman imagines she would have told her father, who was a good man, about the Good News of Jesus Christ and how He was the only God."

Yes, that would have been the Good News she believes she would have shared with her father on his way home that night after leaving the bar. She believes she would have let him know how much of an excellent provider he was even though he wasn't his children's God. And she believes she also would have answered in the same way the young child did by stating "you do," "you do daddy." "But God's my God, daddy, " the adult woman believes she would have added, "and He’s not only our Provider but He's my Daddy too, daddy."

Exodus 34:14
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (KJV)

Peace & Blessings.

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