THE EYEGLASSES OF ETERNITY

Ken’s father separated from Ken’s mom…and him…when he was two years old. The details of the whole thing are muted for me, and actually, they were for him as well. Any way you look at it, he was without a father at a very early age. Only one time thereafter did he see his dad. At the age of 12 he exited his home country in Saskatchewan to spend two weeks with his father in Pennsylvania.

His dad had remarried. The new wife had five children who were not kind to him during his visit. One of them showed a bit of warmth, a fact that Ken often mentioned when reminiscing about his trip to the United States. I recall that Ken went fishing with his dad and that his dad promised him some sort of special memorabilia should something happen to him: an electric train, a watch that had been his grandfather’s and maybe a knife from World War II that went along with the story of his dad having been among the team that chased Rommel.

We invited Ken’s dad and his wife to the wedding; they planned to come but at the last minute changed their mind. We sent photos of Nate, our firstborn, and over the next few years, a Christmas card would arrive with a few dollars for him.

Then communication ceased.

In the late 70s, we learned that they had moved to Florida. Communication resumed on a small scale. They did send a couple of photos of their trailer and one of Dad on a bicycle. We moved to Florida. We never took the trip across the state to see them. Hindsight revealed that we should have.

One day, when we had returned to the North after a difficult nine-month attempt at making things work out in Florida, as I was sitting in my office where I was employed, Ken came in to see me. He had in his hand a letter that he had written. Ken did not write letters. So, I sat up and took notice. He handed it to me to read.

It was a letter to his dad. Basically, the first part of the letter said that what was past is past and that he had no hard feelings about how life had gone. The second half was a clear presentation of the gospel written from the heart of a son to his dad. Ken wrote that the only important thing now was that his dad believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He spelled it out. It was wonderful.

We never heard from him. In 1981, Ken received word that his dad had died a month before. We knew why no one told him promptly: the other kids wanted first shot at the belongings of George. We found that out later to be true.

What else we found out from a visit to an aunt he hadn’t seen for 50 years was that the wife had died first. Ken’s dad changed his will to include Ken. It was a very small amount. The monetary value was not what mattered; it was the change in his dad.

As we drove away from his aunt’s little home in New York, we were both amazed at what we had learned. Does this mean that his dad trusted in Christ as a result of Ken’s letter? Of course we don’t know. Yet, his dad had “ignored” him for 45 years and suddenly had a change of heart. We were filled with hope.

I was going through all that paperwork the other day and found myself weeping as I read the letter from the lawyer saying that Ken was the beneficiary of the life insurance policy. I allowed myself to visualize Ken with his dad in glory. I was proud of my husband and his ability to lay aside, even for a brief moment, the pain of the past and look at things through the glasses of eternity.

Now is the time to reach out to those in your circle who do not know Christ. One of two things is going to happen: either Christ will return or they will die in their sin. Well, I guess one of three things is going to happen…they might do what it takes to be ready either way!