I’m on LBI, the Jersey shore of my childhood, my young adulthood, my middle years, and now my senior years. I came here to preach at the United Church Of Surf City this past Sunday. It went surprisingly well considering I haven’t preached in quite a while. I actually particularly miss that part of the ministry more than the rest. But, of course, it’s not like I have some supreme wisdom that the world can’t live without. The upside is that they want me to come back.
Having said that, I told a true story from my childhood that I want to share with you now in these sometimes scary and trying days we are living in presently. I shared this in my sermon and maybe you will find it helpful in some way.
When I was about five years old or so, I was afraid of the dark because we lived in an old house on Main Street in Medford that had it share of creaks and moans, the way old houses do. My bedroom was upstairs in the back of the house and my parents' bedroom was downstairs.
When I was really scared I would yell downstairs and let my parents know about it, and faithfully my father would come up and sit on the top step of the back stairs. He would sit there as long as I needed him.
It's important that you know that he had to get up very early in the morning to go to work in Philadelphia. When I say early, I'm talking about 4:30 a.m. So he sacrificed a lot of sleep time doing that.
Sometimes he would think that I had fallen asleep and try to get up from the step carefully and quietly, but then I would say to him, "Where are you going, Daddy?" And he would say, "I'm right here" and sit right back down again and would do it over and over again until I would finally be fast asleep.
There in the dark, no matter how many nights it happened, my father would make me feel safe and protected.
When I told that story in my sermon, I ended it by saying that that's what God is like. And I believe that that is true.
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