I ran to Pittsburgh for a day to visit with my Dad. I dressed up thinking to take him to lunch at a nice restaurant that serves a great fish sandwich – Dad & I love a good fish sandwich! When I arrived he handed me a list of things he was hoping I could get done before heading for home: clean out the gutters, sweep out the garage, blow off the driveway, gather up the remaining leaves on his two acres, hose down the house… I was able to take my shirt off but my white pants took a beating. His gutters were full of compost as well as last season’s leaves. Then I sank his lawn tractor in the mud – there was a lot of kneeling involved in getting it extricated.
Given my past history of visits to my Dad’s house it was actually quite foolish of me to show up dressed up. When you visit Dad you need to be ready to work. Don’t get me wrong, those are my favorite kind of visits. I just wrongly thought that because I was planning on being in town for only a couple of hours that we’d do lunch, chat about his decision to sell the place, where he was going to live… There I was sitting in an upscale restaurant with a nice shirt & pants that looked like they’d been drug through the mud.
In your Father’s house don’t expect it to be all happy, happy, happy. There’s work to do on your soul & you can’t expect Him to just sit there & smile rather than press you on issues that need to be addressed. There’s work to be done.