Guess Who?

There once lived a young man whose world was turned upside down. A speaker sharing the gospel seemed to read this young man's mind. He walked away a changed man. A Vietnam veteran, he started attending college and met the love of his life. He asked her to dance. They started to fall in love. He asked her to marry him; she was afraid, but not of him. He waited for her to say yes. He wasn't going anywhere. On a road trip, one day, she finally said yes.

Almost four years into their marriage, they had a son. Two and a half years later, they had another child, a girl. This now grown man worked so hard for his family. He also was a living example of a godly man. All you had to do was contrast his words and deeds with his relatives' at family reunions and get-togethers. It stood out to his son that he was probably the only man at those family functions that wasn't drinking or smoking.

This man's son loved church too. He loved it so much that he decided to throw a fit one Sunday evening when it was time to go home. For over half of the trip home, his son protested vehemently, insisting that he was not going to go home. Well, then the man pulled over to a dark street corner at Walnut and Nora and let his little son have a choice. If he wasn't going to go home, he could get out of the car. The son thought that he would certainly convince his parents that he was right if he got out of the car, so he did that very thing. To his shock, he watched as the yellow car pulled away and the tailights got smaller and smaller, heading westward, the opposite direction of church--and him. Now, his son just wanted to go home. The man's wife fought back the desire to flagellate him for leaving her baby boy alone on some dark street corner. He accelerated more quickly than usual, driving completely around the block to get back to his son, who was more than ready to get back into the car and go home.

There are so many stories of this man, and they are not all as controversial as the previous. There is the story of his crazy friend who always had an interesting way of helping him celebrate a new birthday. A knock at the door followed by a flying pie to the face brought his little son to tears; the man got the joke and enjoyed it immensely--after he comforted his son. Other birthday memories include a t-shirt buried in a cement block, a bag of manure, and some kind of gift enclosed in a small wooden casket for his 40th birthday. It might seem harsh, but this man was just getting back what he always liked to dish out. This is, after all, the same man who folded his ear up tightly into a rubber band and told his little kids that his ear had been cut off and the same man who, to this day, goes out of his way to pull pranks on friends, co-workers, and family and loves to engage in a little friendly trash-talking.

There are more serious memories too. There was the time that he wandered all around the West Central Spokane neighborhood, looking for the juvenile who had asked if he could "borrow" his son's basketball, the devastated look in his son's eyes when the ball never returned driving him from park to park until he retrieved it. There were all of the nights that his father showed amazing patience when his son would run terrified into their room night and night again. There were the talks about God being in control and watching over their family that sunk into his son's head right before the man would pray for two things: first, that his son would grow up to be a man of God and, second, that his son wouldn't have any bad dreams or be afraid of scary noises. There was a night were he stayed up all night with his son--now thirteen--to play Magic Johnson's Fast Break on the family's new Nintendo Entertainment System. There was the time that his son heard him really cry for the first time after he tried to share the hope of Jesus Christ with a dear family member, who replied by scoffing in a fit of drunkenness and bitterness. There was the time when he prayed that God would let him die in the place of his father, who was dying from cancer and didn't know the Lord. There was the time that he took his hormonal, know-it-all son aside in high school and said that he had "been there too."

This man, the hard-working, godly, family man, probably went through years of wondering what he did wrong as a father as his son was capsized by a torrent of debauchery. He yelled at his son for his son's own benefit. He cried for his son. He pleaded over and over again for his son. Everything that he had done to train his son in the right path the son had rejected. The son lived recklessly and irresponsibly, feeling so free in his vices, his chains. This man could do nothing else but pray. And pray he did.

The man made a point to hate the sin but love the sinner that was his only son. Yes, it is possible to do that, and praise God for the people who do it. When all of his son's pursuits left him empty and forlorn, his father wasn't there saying, "I told you so!" He was there giving him rides to work since he was too irresponsible with money to have a car or keep one running. He would take his wayward son to breakfast on Friday mornings, where the man always met with godly men to dig into the Bible and pray for one another. Of course, the man would always treat his son.

This man may have never known that he was still fully engaged in the process of making a disciple of Jesus Christ in his son just by the unconditional love that he showed him. It may have taken 21 years and ten days for true repentance to take place, but this man never backed down from the process. All of those years of modeling the light of Christ at those family functions, praying with his son when he was young and for him when he ran off on his own, and reading the Bible with and to his family were not years spent in vain. The immovable devotion to his wife that stood in stark contrast to the broken marriages plaguing his neighborhood, on top of everything else just mentioned, are a few of the evidences of God's grace in this man that the Lord used to bring his son to grace in 1999.

Many men make huge impacts, but they don't know it. They speak to their children as toddlers and wonder if they are processing a single word. They speak to them as teenagers and wonder if their words mean anything to the kids in the midst of all of their teenage drama, their hormones, and their unfounded confidence and self-assurance.

Time is the greatest teller of whether or not words spoken have made an impression. It is not just the words that mattered for this man. It was the deeds that backed up the words. It was wrestling matches, the hot breakfasts, the first time his son ran Bloomsday with him, the practical jokes, and many other things.

It should be pretty obvious who this man is. He has been married to the love of his life for almost thirty-five years. He says that one of the happiest accomplishments of his life is having two children who love God. He loves little children in a way that models Christ, and he now has three grandchildren of his own. His one friend who gave him all of the crazy gifts still brings around morbid gifts--this year, a buzzard named Murdock? He still works his tail off to care for his family today, at the age of sixty.

This man is my father, Jim Gilchrist. He is not just my biological father, but he has been my spiritual father and one of my dearest friends. I wanted to take the time to let him and everyone else know how amazing of a father he is by the grace of God.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you. Thank you.