Friday, October 5, 2012

Word order is everything


“To this day I have had the help that comes from God.” Acts 26:22

Sometimes my daddy garbles up his word order, and things don’t make much sense even though the strung together words are big fancy Vanderbilt University editor-with-stacks-of-dictionaries-on-his-desk-to-select-the-most-correct-nuance sorts.  And his listeners sit there helplessly, not even having a clue how to respond beyond a rather quizzical, “You are exactly right?”

So last night, when Alan asked him to lead grace at the dinner table he smiled happily, because asking grace is one of the very few things he totally understands these days.  So Gio, Alan and I all reached and held hands over the chicken and rice and zucchini (which means little pumpkins, plural, by the way) and he took a long pause and started, “Father, You are ours.”

And all of our eyes popped open.  Because one hundred percent of the time, my dad starts and finishes prayers exactly the same, “Father, we are Yours.” Every time, and now he has mixed up the one thing he knows how to do.

Here Paul is able to look Agrippa the king straight in the eye without flinching and declare, “To this day I have had the help that comes from God.”  Draped in chains, a back nicely scarred from all the beatings, standing in the midst of pointing fingers demanding his immediate death.  And he spoke with such conviction and clarity that Agrippa, sitting up on his soaring fancy throne, did flinch and was almost persuaded.  

And as I reflect upon my life, complete with the flies and cockroaches and crowds rocking the prison walls and dead bodies on the back forty and other stories told around the fireplace, and as I reflect on the long twisting strand of DNA that connects my daddy and me, and amidst the floods and fires and earthquakes and snow blizzards, I know one thing, he is exactly right.  

He is ours.  

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