My dad grew up on a corn farm in the heartland. His was not a wealthy farm, but things got worse with the Great Depression when the banker in Allen, Nebraska, skipped town with the savings of most everyone. When that happened, it would be an understatement to say that the banker let down the family and the community at large. Decades later my dad told me the men of the town took out after him to do colorful things to him that I cannot use in a church publication. They never found him.

I don’t know how my grandparents managed to keep the land as long as they did, but one thing I know from the stories my dad told, farming was hard work—hours of work before breakfast, followed by more hours of work for as long as the sun allowed. There were so many variables to a good season. Pests, this summer think cicadas. Enough rain, but not too much at once, and he saw his share of twisters. And the market price of corn could make or break a good harvest.

Dad was in the middle of his family in birth order. He watched older siblings make choices about what to do once they reached young adulthood. None of them stayed on the farm. They left the middle of the country to try to find their fortunes elsewhere. The hard winters likely are what in part drove Dad to head west instead of east. Another factor was one of his oldest brothers falling for a woman whose great-niece turned out to be the woman he would marry, my mom.

Some of the brothers settled along the coast of California. My dad and mom in Santa Barbara, and then by the time I was born, Long Beach. Uncle Vern and Aunt Ardean in Ventura. Vern was younger than my dad, just the right age to serve in World War II, something from which he never quite recovered.

Now that I’ve lived more of my life in the Midwest than on the West Coast, I fully appreciate their choice, especially in the time they did it. There was no smog back then, no freeways. Communities of newly built homes were just farmlands of citrus fruit or almonds or avocados. Imagining what it must have been like, I’m sensing something Edenic. I was once on a farm in Ukraine in the summer, and I felt as if I was back home in the California, cherry valley of my childhood, eating sun-warm sweet cherries right from the tree.

My dad didn’t have to deal with snow, and farm work was not what he wanted to do either. Both he and my mom were hard workers and instilled that in their kids. We learned to work hard no matter the task. So, he gave himself heartily to whatever he was hired to do. Uncle Vern fled Ventura to own a service station in a town on the road to Las Vegas. This town consisted of his service station, a restaurant and a few rooms to rent for the night.

California wasn’t the only place my dad’s family moved—and the family scattered. My own siblings eventually scattered as well. So, when one of my sisters moved to Connecticut, we drove across the country to see her. We would stop along the way at relatives. Washington, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa.. Dad took his Super-8 camera and filmed the journeys.

So many of their stories got lost along the way. They didn’t talk about the past much. I didn’t experience most of what I’ve written about here, so these fragments are all I have. So much of Dad’s life happened before I was born—how to know him?

My older siblings experienced life as a church-going family. I never did. There was a church that was dubbed “our church,” but we rarely went there. Something had happened to make them stop. It could have been recovery from an injury that stopped him going. I don't know.

My dad loved his family. He especially loved babies. I can still see him at one of our family gatherings. No shirt. Brown pants held up by suspenders and the baby in his arm like a bag of groceries—this was a supremely happy moment for him.

When I was in early grade school, we all learned that he had a disease for which there was no cure. He was older than my mom, and I was the youngest of their six kids, so by the time I came along, two thirds of his life was behind him. Our relationship was forged in that final third, when he figured out that he wasn’t going to strike it rich, when he became housebound and needed help just to breathe or to move from room to room, when he realized that he was dying. Dad died in 1980. It was my care for him as he moved toward his own death that brought us together and enabled me to love and serve him.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Dad.

The paternal drive doesn’t have to be lived out only with our physical progeny. So, here’s to the brothers, uncles, neighbors, pastors, Christian friends who give themselves to those without dads.

All the more remarkable is the Fatherhood of God. My dad went across the country to escape hardship and to meet, marry and care for Mom. God traveled through eternity into incarnation to make his enemies his children. He comes when we least deserve him. Consider Jesus, the true father of us all and how he described himself in the Gospel of John.
“I am the bread of life.”
“I am the light of the world.”
“I am the door of the sheep.”
“I am the good shepherd.”
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
“I am the way, the truth and the life.”
“I am the true vine.”

As I grow older, the actions and realities of my own dad fade, but the fatherly love of the Triune God grows more real. His ever-present care reflects in the “I am” piercing my soul, opening my blind eyes, warming my heart.

It is Christ’s care for us as he moved toward his own death and truly died, rose and ascended. This is what brings us together and enables me to love and serve him—to know him as the best and ultimate Father, making every day a different kind of Father’s Day.

Memories of my dad fade with time. He is one I will never forget in whole, but particulars, seem farther and farther away.

Jesus, on the other hand, I see him more and more. I see him in the way God uses unexpected people to do surprising things. I see him in the deathbed room of my best friend. He shows up in Kindergarten for all to see. Sometimes you can even find him in church service, in the songs, the word, the prayers, the people sitting beside you. When I’m enjoying a meal with a friend, Jesus is right there at the table with us. As I write and rewrite even this, he’s here with me watching, reading, clinging to every word like a loving father would. When the enemies come to us, in places like Nigeria or North Korea or in warring Russia and Ukraine, he takes the hands of his children, he lifts them up on his shoulders and walks so they never have to take another step on their own ever again.