A TREE BY THE SEA

The child sits in the shadow of her father.  She is quiet for the most part. There is not much to say this morning. She is content knowing that he loves her. He is turning pages in a large book and sipping from a frothy cup of hot coffee.  Her small hands grip a stubby well used crayon as she traces the letters of her name carefully in her work book. His presence makes her feel safe.  She is surrounded by the warmth of her home and a knowing that her father is there to protect her.  She is humming to herself then starts to sing, “I love my Daddy.” Her voice is sweet repeating the words in varying tunes.  Her father looks up from his book and can’t help but smile as his heart swells with love for the precious little person sitting beside his chair with the morning sun streaming through the window.

In a momentary flash his mind removes him from this happy setting.  He is carried into a darkness and pain that rips at his insides.  He feels his flesh being torn from his bones. He blinks.  He is returned here.  To this moment with his daughter. A sharp intake of breath. Her voice is soothing to him.

She looks up from her work. “Daddy, why are you crying?” She notices the tears that have slipped from the wells in his eyes. He just smiles at her and in return she beams back up at him. There is no way to explain to her. To let her inside his soul. He doesn’t want her to ever know the depravity of humans. The horror that mocks the beauty of a child such as this. She sits in innocence and knows only of love.

“There was a time,” he begins. His voice is quiet. She climbs up into his lap so she can hear. “There was a time,” he repeats himself after she has arranged her chubby limbs comfortably and displaced his book. “I wasn’t the man who you know as Daddy.” Her fingers pick at the collar of his shirt. “I didn’t know how to love anyone. I was angry and forgot how to let others love me.  I had hurt others and been hurt back.” The child understands. She has heard her father speak of the war.  She knows how he lies in bed for hours at times because it is too painful to get up. “But now you love me!” she bubbles out the little statement with such joy and confidence that he can’t help but hug her a little tighter.

“Now I love you.” He echoes her with a whisper into her ear. “What are you reading?” she wants to know. The bible lays open on the floor at their feet.  In truth he had not been reading much at all.  He had been sitting there with it open on his lap looking out his front window and thinking of the day ahead. He looks to where the page is open on psalm 139. He reads out loud, “You have searched me, Lord and you know me.”  He continues to read through the psalm. It has been some time since he read it.  His daughter listens through to the end than climbs down from his lap.  She is distracted again by her work book.

He reads through again to himself thinking of the far side of the sea and the depths he had visited, the darkness that he thought would cover him.  The constant pain in his hip reminds him of his darkest night. He often finds himself reviewing scenes, being forced to relive in his dreams painful memories.  He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

The anger, the fear, the guilt, the loss. No man can know another’s pain fully, yet the soldier who wrote these words says God had searched him and known him. God saw what was in his heart and mind. God was there even when the darkness had made void all evidence of good. Where was the light? The thought is barely voiced within when he is answered. It was in you. Me? He thinks back incredulously. How could any light have been in me? He tries to remember his heart and what he was thinking lying on a field gurney with chaos around him.  Then he remembers a prayer.  A spark in the darkness.  “God help me.” He heard it on the lips of a dying man beside him and echoed it with his own. “God help me.”

Years ago he would have scoffed. He came home so angry. Why didn’t God help the guy next to him? Why is it him here now drinking coffee on a sunny morning next to a girl who loves him with all her heart. He is reminded of the blood warm at first that soaked his clothing then dried to a hard mass of congealed fibers that hurt more than he wanted to admit when pulled away from his wound. He thinks of another blood that flowed freely from a dying man.  The last words from His mouth a cry to His father. The cry of the forsaken. He thinks of all the words that come to the ears of God.  Men dying, children crying.  Little girls just as precious as his own daughter abandoned. Then he is reminded of the spark.  The light in the darkness. The cry to heaven. Every voice is heard. Every moment is heard.

An overwhelming presence shadows over him as he sits pondering the heart of God. How can He hear? How can He know the pain of humanity and let it continue? Why do some see life while others taste death? Questions made cliché by the repeated asking. Sometimes he is so sick with guilt for the life he has. In light of other’s suffering it is hard to pray.  Yet he lets his heart once again soak in the words of the psalmist, “You lay your hand upon me.”

“Thank you God.” he says. There are no elegant words.  No declarations of love, just a heart that turns upward to heaven and speaks an honest utterance of thanks.

A father watches His children.  He looks over a world He has made of individuals that He gave a right to choose. He gave them the choice between life with Him and life without Him.  He promised to protect them and love them. Yet many of them decide to ignore Him. Some even hate Him. In a momentary flash His mind removes him from the site of one of His creation ruthlessly inflicting pain on another.  He is distracted by a pinpoint of light, a love blazing towards Him.  He feels His breaking heart receiving the gratitude of His child. He blinks. His presence rests here. In this moment with His son. A sharp intake of breath. The voice of this child is soothing to Him.