Building Shelters
Loving children with absent fathers
Kids from the crisis shelter without fathers in their lives, look at you differently.
For some there’s slight anxiety, an awkward uneasiness, they calmly steer clear, pull back and ignore.
Others stare at you like they have seen the elusive and mysterious Bigfoot, a tinge of fear and welcoming wonder.
They cling to stuffed animals like life preservers. I’ve had to make two trips to the shelter on a Sunday to hunt down a plushy friend accidentally left at the church. Reuniting kid to unicorn is like a rescue from drowning waters.
Smiles and laughter escape the youngest and they will sometimes settle into your arms like a kangaroo looking for its pouch.
“Would you hold her?” are words that I often hear moms say. Those requests ache with longing. Hearts sitting over hopes and dreams like cooling embers from lives burned down. Mama memories of what should have been.
I do hold them, desperately. Deep in my spirit like Mary must have held Jesus when He was lowered off the cross, in horror and hope, in death and resurrection.
When I hold those children, I cling to the eternal promises spoken in scripture and in those words I stand. Holding the future in my arms, I am the priest of old that stood between plague and people. My prayers, like the grasped censer of incense, waved in the face of consuming death.
At least that’s my hope, a fool's hope, but hope nonetheless.
Sunday services are like the mount of transfiguration. Brief moments where what was, what is and what will be collide in the cloud of unknowing. Possibilities, voices and conversations with dead prophets. Disciples scurrying about trying to do something in these moments that match the meaning of what’s unfolding.
All the God visited, want to build shelters.
To be enveloped into God is like coming home. We want to stay. We want to be covered. We instinctively want to provide a sense of place to wandering hearts. Our hands get quickened to do something for someone.
Every Sunday these encounters stir up the same existential knowing.
As a man…
I know what is right.
What should be.
What has been lost.
What is needed.
On Sundays I say yes in a broken world that says no too many times. In light of all that should and could be, I respond:
I smile
I hold
I wipe the nose
I pray
I love
I sing.
Because it’s what my Heavenly Father does:
“For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” Zephaniah 3:17
