Shed The Father's Day Guilt

Okay, I know it's father's day plus one but hey, I'm not on the air Sundays.

Some of you hearing this are breathing a sigh of relief precisely because Father's Day has come and gone. For you, any remembrance of your father is painful, and angering! Your father was not a good man; even by sinful man's standards and if I'm talking to you I trust you know what I mean.

One thing I want to tell you is that you need not feel any pangs of guilt because Father's Day has come and gone and you did nothing for your father--except try to forget that you have one. Oh I know you can probably find plenty of pastors who will say something glib like, "You need to forgive and forget," or "It's time to move on."

Heaven knows, you would loved to have done that years ago but somehow an undesired odor, the sound of a footfall sets off a chain reaction of emotions and memories that cast you right back into the prison of that perpetrator.

Can I tell you that your heavenly Father is far angrier with that man than you are? Oh I know that's hard to believe; if that were true, surely God would have done something definitively horrendous to him before now, you think. Well, I do understand that believe me, but I also know that God has stored up his anger for a future day. That's why the apostle Paul admonishes the folks at Rome to "leave room for the wrath of God" rather than exacting your own revenge in such situations. Oh, it's there I assure you--Romans 12:19--even though it is an element of God's nature that few wish to discuss.

We're far more comfortable with an ooey-gooey spongy god whose vocabulary contains only the words-- I Love You. But the fact remains that from Genesis to Revelation one cannot escape the holy character of God who promises from beginning to end that "The Day of the Lord" is coming, a day when justice, ultimate justice will finally be fulfilled.

So that man who hurt you; who violated you is a marked man and your heavenly father knows who he is and what he did, and he hasn't gotten away with anything. One day you, and that man, will realize that.