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This article is intensely personal for me. It is my experience of being touched by the heart of God as my loving Father.
In November of 2019 I started having difficulty reading. It came on quite suddenly, getting markedly worse over a couple of weeks. I saw a doctor an a few days later I had an MRI on Wednesday December 11, which showed a walnut sized tumor in my brain, above and behind my left ear. On Friday morning I was admitted to UCHealth in Aurora Colorado and by the end of the day I was scheduled for a Monday surgery to remove the tumor.
On that Saturday night, lying in the hospital bed, I needed a touch from God. It was quite unnerving to me to think about being put to sleep and having a doctor dig something out of my brain. The sense of my own mortality was very real to me, lying there alone in the darkness.
I had been a Christian for 50 years, but I just didn’t feel like a successful one. Many times I had failed my Lord, my church and my loved ones. My failings were heavy on my heart.
In my musing on these things, a phrase came to me – “I do earnestly remember him still”. I knew it was part of a Bible verse so I looked it up on my phone’s Bible program and found it to be Jeremiah 31:20 “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD.” (KJV).
I lay there and read the verse, then read the whole chapter. One significant point that I will interject here is that, due to my brain tumor, my reading skill was quite impaired at the time, so it took 3 to 4 times as long to read some things as it should have. Instead of glancing at a word and immediately knowing that word and jumping to the next word, all in milliseconds, I had to study each word, sometimes spelling it out letter by letter before I would recognize it. When reading that slowly, every word a minor discovery, each word had it’s own weight and value, and spoke truth to my soul.
Ephraim was the difficult son. The son who’s best efforts at obedience fell short. Who wanted to get it right, or at least a part of him did, but always seemed to find himself short of the mark. He complained that he was like “a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke”. He was ashamed and dismayed as he looked at his life. (Verses 18 & 19)
Then God the father speaks in Verse 20, first asking two questions. “Is Ephraim my dear son?” The answer to this question is surely YES. Then He asks “Is he a pleasant child?” and I have to conclude that the answer to this question is surely a resounding NO! He was a difficult child, a challenge in human form. I imagine God, if He were human, wishing that he could just ditch Ephraim. Give up on him.
Start over, with someone else who was more agreeable and moldable. But no, He then says “…I spake against him, (but) I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD. In human terms, God can’t help it! He loves his son! He cannot forget him, or cut him off. Instead, He grants mercy, again, to the penitent, undeserving Ephraim.
This surely is a most vivid portrayal of a Father heart!
This truth was settled in my heart that night in my hospital bed: That God loved ME, not because I deserved it, but because He is my Father! He “doth earnestly remember (me) still”, even if I have not been a “pleasant child”. I understood this, at a deep level, and my heart was filled with gratitude and praise for His acceptance and grace! I invite all readers to comprehend and believe that this is abundantly true for you as well!
Can we be fathers like that? Looking through the faults and failings and disappointments with which our children will inevitably present, especially the ones that are strong willed and difficult? Can we love them then anyway, maybe even especially?
We don’t get to choose what kind of child is born to us. Even adopted children are often chosen before their traits are all apparent. But then they are ours, 100% ours! And every one of them needs acceptance, and not just when it’s easy to give. Let’s follow the example of the best Father ever.