DailySusan Humor Blog

OUR FATHER'S SIGNATURE

And I looked, and, lo,
a Lamb stood on the mount Sion,
and with him an hundred forty and four thousand,
having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.
-- Revelation 14:1

Two years ago, there was a wedding down at our neighborhood pond, uniting the daughter of some dear friends and her sweetheart, a strong, tall football player. His dad, equally tall and athletic, sets a wonderful Christian example of soft-spoken kindness.

For the wedding, the bridegroom and his dad built a big, beautiful cross out of sturdy wood. The ceremony wasn’t going to be in a church, but these families wanted to make it clear what the marriage was going to be based on.

A few days before, several guys erected the cross, making sure it was level. The father of the bride, the father of the groom, my husband and another neighbor held it aloft with the utmost care, like the statue of Iwo Jima, setting it in concrete.

Some ladies added a long white strip of sheer fabric that gracefully waved in the breeze. The effect was breathtaking.

It was the prettiest wedding ever. They left the cross up for weeks afterward, for another wedding was coming up. The land belonged to our neighborhood association, and they had permission. Whenever I passed by, I gazed at it. The cross made me feel good.

Then one terrible day, it was gone.

Someone had come in the night, and chain-sawed it down.

Reportedly, an angry person had called the local police three times to complain about the cross, and were told it was on private property, out of police jurisdiction.

So the person had just gone in there and cut it down, a couple of feet above the concrete base, leaving an ugly stump. The cross lay on the ground.

The father of the bride and the father of the groom were shocked. How could anybody feel that way about a cross? How could anybody mutilate such a positive, uplifting statement?

I wanted to organize a mob, like in the movie Frankenstein, march on whoever did it with torches and pitchforks, and make them glue it back together and apologize.

God! How could you let Your Son’s Cross be humiliated like this?

But the two fathers decided not to make a stink. They picked up the cross, took it to the bride’s parents’ nearby home, and erected it in their back yard.

A darling granddaughter has been born of that beautiful wedding, and she had her first Easter egg hunt around that cross this past spring.

The two dads and everybody else felt sad that somebody could harbor so much hate over something that was all about love. I was still mad that the vandal didn’t get punished or made to pay restitution for the property damage. But oh, well.

All of us had looked at the stump of the cross down at the pond 100 times . . . maybe 1,000.

But recently, the mother of the bride looked a little closer, and saw something:

There’s a heart in the wood!

It’s a natural knot on the corner of the stump. A heart! Plain as day!

It must have been there all along. But nobody saw it, ‘til now.

When I saw it, a thrill ran through me. I recognized our Father’s signature. All my anger at the vandal was wiped away. Here’s why:

You can criticize the cross. You can file a lawsuit against it. You can complain to the cops. You can cut it down. You can burn it, mutilate it, stomp on it, break it into a million pieces.

But you can never wipe away its true meaning. It’s the Father’s heart – the Father’s love.

On this Father’s Day, I hope all dads remember that. Nothing can ever stop your love for your children. Not trouble, not pain, not even death. It’s permanent. It’s forever. That love is a part of you, and a part of them. Nobody can ever take it away.

The same thing goes for our heavenly Father and His Son, despite the Cross, and because of it.

It was there all along . . . and it’s there to stay. †