This weekend Americans celebrate Father’s Day. I do not know if other countries also set aside a special day each year for people to pause, reflect, and remember our earthly fathers. My wife Miran’s South Korean culture celebrates “Parents Day” every May 8th. This 2023 Father’s Day carries a special meaning for me, since my father’s 110th birthday would have been last week on June 9th, and 30 years ago my father passed from this earth while all four of his children stood at his bedside. Join me for a moment as we think about Our Father On Father’s Day – both our earthly and Heavenly Fathers.
I really miss my father, Gayle M. Denny, a self-made man with one year of college who survived the 1929 depression, and who rose from stocking shelves in the basement to CEO of Transylvania Printing Company in Lexington, KY, where he spent 43 years. The father of four, he surely had a way with words, many of his words cracked us kids up, and many made us think way deeper than before. When I stood privately with him a month after experiencing divorce, he cried with me, hugged me, and said, “God loves you son, and I love you always, so don’t ever forget that you are never alone.” My dad’s unwavering Christian faith journey, I am sure, played a huge role in keeping me on the right road.
And there were these goofy ones, the ones we called his GMD-isms (after his initials): “Get out of bed and let the stink blow off of you;” “Why are you still in bed, don’t you know that all our relatives died in the bed?” And this gem, when confronted with bad drivers on the highway, “Cows could drive better than this guy; they ought to let cows drive instead of him!”
On vacation at the Grand Canyon, when the Native American dance show was over a half hour late in starting, my dad jumped up in front of the restless crowd and hollered, “Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s bring them on with a big hand!” The show started and I was so proud of his courage.
One more GMD-ism, and this one lives on in infamy in the Denny Family lore. In a restaurant where our whole family had gone through a cafeteria line for our food, found a table, sat down, and had started to eat, when a waiter appeared to my father with these words, “Three waiters, sir.” My father was flummoxed, had no idea what this was about, and he actually said privately to us after the head waiter had left, “Well, I guess he was big enough for three waiters.” All of us, while trying not to laugh out loud at my dad’s “big enough for three waiters” comment, cringed with embarrassment at this obvious request for a tip, since three of his wait staff had carried our family’s trays of food! I truly hope the man was given a tip, but my eight-year-old’s memory fails me here as I suspect I did not continue watching. My older sister does not recall if our dad gave a tip.
My dad was a great letter writer, all by hand. I am aghast at the fact that I never saved any of his letters! What a treasure trove those handwritten letters would be; hindsight is always 20-20, right?
I think about Our Father On Father’s Day and my mind goes to when Jesus taught his disciples about prayer. He told them, “Pray like this: Our Father in heaven” [Matthew 6: 9, NLT]. By using the first-person plural pronoun “our,” Jesus gives us full consent to ownership of his Father. In fact, he includes himself in the word “our,” so that we, along with billions of others, may have that same kind of personal relationship with God. I am reminded of Chapter One in my book where I focused on the opening three words of the Merton Prayer, “My Lord God.” Jesus used the plural “our” and Merton used the singular “my;” both of which connote ownership. How cool and comforting is that!
May Our Father On Father’s Day be a blessing to you as you connect with both your earthly father and your Heavenly Father. Like my dad said, “God loves you always and you are never alone!”
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The Merton Prayer 