"Unanswered" Prayers

Father's Day on Cannery Row.

Yesterday I had the wonderful blessing of being able to head north after church and spend Father's Day with my parents. For weeks I looked forward to a good, long cup of coffee at a special coffee shop on Cannery Row—sitting, catching up, just being together. As we headed up the Salinas Valley the fog bank ahead looked ominous, but when we got to the coffee shop I had requested the weather was beautiful, the ocean glittered in the sun, and someone had even left us two outside tables, pushed together, with an umbrella above them and six chairs arranged around them. Thanks, Lord!

When I went into the coffee shop to order while we waited for my folks to arrive I noticed on the top of the counter facing the door a few books on stands . . . a couple of titles by John Steinbeck, and my dad's pictorial history of the Monterey/Cannery Row waterfront and sardine industry, From Fisherman's Wharf to Steinbeck's Cannery Row. When he got there I had fun telling my dad that he was ranked up there side by side with Steinbeck!

Not bad company to be next to . . .

Later last night, as we sat around visiting at my parent's home, Dad reminded me of a time in the very early 1960s when he had bumped in to Steinbeck on the street up in San Francisco. All of a sudden, as he shared it, I thought of how, often, if we were told our future, we'd never believe it because it would be so out of our current frame of reference that we couldn't receive it. When my dad bumped in to John Steinbeck, at the time Steinbeck was a well known author . . . but my dad was not writing, I wasn't in the picture, and grand kids certainly weren't! It would have been, on that early 1960s day, mind-bending to be told that he would one day be a father of a son, a grandfather of two beautiful girls, an author of a book that would be shelved next to Steinbeck's, and spending a Father's day almost 50 years later with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters at a waterfront coffee shop at an elegant resort hotel in an area that, at that time, was marked old abandoned canneries with little tourist appeal.

As I reflected on that, I found myself thinking of how often we probably ask God for an answer to something and, while He knows it, He either can't give it to us, or we can't recognize it as from Him when He does (thinking, instead, we are just having weird thoughts or daydreams), because the answer is completely out of our frame of current reference because it involves situations and circumstances that we have yet to even know will happen. Sometimes, I believe, we must wait to get an answer from God because a person, or situation, or event involved in the answer is not even in place or in the picture yet, and there is no way for us to comprehend an answer that involves something or someone we are not even aware of yet.

As I look back at seasons of my life I realize how many places there are in it that if you had told me where I'd be five or ten or twenty years later I would have either laughed, called you crazy, or simply not been able to wrap myself around it (i.e. the college freshmen mocking a God he claims he doesn't believe in becoming a pastor, etc.). Certainly, if I had a thought about a future like that I would have dismissed it! And yet, when we pray and ask God a question about the future, how many times is that the same situation? We wouldn't recognize the answer if He gave it to us because it is so out of the current context of our life or situation. And so, in that period of waiting, we move ahead on faith—not believing God hasn't heard or doesn't care, but just trusting the love He showed us on the cross and knowing that, if we aren't seeming to get an answer from Him, we can trust His love and trust His character and goodness, and trust that there is a good reason for it—and that He has not left us, ceased to care for us, or stopped watching over us.

“Surrender” is a Beautiful Word . . .

Dad and me.

I want to share an example that I believe God gave me this weekend when the youth camped at our home. I believe it illustrates the Christian life in such a powerful way that I shared it in my Sunday teaching at church as well. May it bless you . . .

I love my dad. He is a wonderful, supportive dad and I am blessed to have him. I miss him when we are apart, and I look forward to the times we are together. I admire him and his dedication to what he feels is important. He loves history and he is an author, and he has a passion for preserving history in written form and passing it, and his love for it, on to others.

Over the last 2–3 years he and I have spent countless hours on my days off working on his latest book (a revision of a book he wrote years ago on the Monterey/Cannery Row sardine industry that caused the waterfront to become famous through it and the writings of men like John Steinbeck). I probably need to back up and say that, before I started pastoring full time, Mary Ann and I used to do computer typesetting—taking author’s manuscripts and art and turning them into print-ready format.

This book is my father’s book. It is his vision, his desire, his goal. It is not mine. I have other things on my heart to do. I did not wake up those days saying that I wanted to work 6–10 hours in front of the computer on a book about Cannery Row. It is not that the book, or Cannery Row, is bad in any way. It is just not my desire or priority.

But, what is a greater truth is that I love my dad, and this is a gift I can give him—and that is, at that moment, my greatest desire and priority—my desire to love my dad is a greater desire than to do my own thing. I can be his hands, positioning words and pictures exactly where he wants them, moving and adjusting them at his word, giving him a level of control he couldn’t get otherwise. I can sit with him and keep working and changing until my father says, “I like it!”

I did this, and I did it gladly, because I love my dad. When this book is finally on the shelves of bookstores (sometimes we wondered if it ever would get there!), it will be a total reflection of my dad. When people look at the book they will see him, because it will be the expression of his desire. He often made choices of typefaces and positioning I wouldn’t have made, but it wasn’t my book. Had I pushed my desires the book would have reflected me and not him. It’s not my book, it’s his, and as such it should reflect him. I would only get in the way and cloud that reflection by pushing my desires and preferences on him.

What did it take? It took surrender. A surrender birthed in love. I woke up those mornings and gladly surrendered my plans and desires to my father’s heart, for my father’s work. I did it gladly because I love him, and it is my great pleasure and joy to give him that gift. In the end, no one will stop me on the street and say, “You are the one who typeset that book!” And, they shouldn’t. I was just the hands to bring my father’s vision and work to completion, in exactly the way my father wanted it. But, in the end, people do stop my dad on the street and say, “I love your books! I have them all!” and they say, “Your books changed my child. History is now their favorite subject.” And that’s the way it should be. I am just his hands—he is the one with the vision, and when I do the typesetting I am simply doing my father’s work . . . or, rather, he is doing it through me—he is moving a word, or changing a picture, using my hands to do it. It is his, and that is how it should be.

The parallel to the Christian life should be obvious. If I want to say that I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me, it requires surrender. It requires me setting aside my plans and my desires and, in love and honor for my Father in heaven, surrendering to His work and His plans. And then, as I let my light shine before men that they may see my good works, they glorify the Father in heaven. As it should be. He deserves it. If I do it my way, then they see me. If He does it through me, then they see Him. I am merely His hands and feet, letting Him work through me to bring to pass His desires and vision. He alone deserves the glory and praise . . . and because I love Him, that should bring me the greatest joy and be my greatest pleasure. Surrender is, truly, a beautiful word.