For the last couple of weeks, I've been holding on to an article that was written by one of our elders, Jason Mathisen, who recently underwent a nerve-wracking incident with his son Tristan. This crisis led Jason to some serious thinking about fatherhood, the gift of children, and the treasure of God Himself. Jason recorded his thoughts on paper, and at the prompting of his wife Lauren, passed them on to me.
The original title of Jason's article was The Love That Abraham Had for God Was Greater Than That for Isaac. May the Lord be pleased to challenge your hearts through the following testimony.
When my son Tristan was 6 years old he had spent the afternoon fishing with his “pampie” which is our term for grandfather on my wife’s side. (I guess that’s not as strange as "KeeKee," which is what my kids call my father which actually started out as "Kukie".) Well, anyway. . .
Pampie had picked up Tristan from school, and my wife dropped my daughter Peyton off to meet them so that the three of them could go fishing - or in my son's case feed the mosquitoes. (He can get a bite on the side of his forehead and end up looking like the sketches of Cro-Magnon man. I swear you could show a movie on his forehead and charge admission.)
As you can probably guess, Tristan got a lot of bites and had a pretty bad reaction, for we forgot to remind Pampie to put bug spray on him. Well, we were prepped and ready with Benadryl cream and kids' Benadryl liquid to administer to my son to keep him from looking like Quasi Moto or the Elephant man.
So the fishing expedition arrived with big smiles and tales of two fish, one that got away and the one that was caught which was respectably the size of my 6-year-old son's foot. Oh, and there were baby geese and turtles that peed on them and of course my son's trophy mosquito feedings…
Benadryl to the rescue.
We sat down to eat supper, and as the adults talked, the kids retired to the living room with cookies in hand to watch a cartoon.
Well about a half hour later my informant daughter came in to tell us that Tristan had crashed out on the couch. No big issue there, considering his long day at school followed by fishing.
After my father-in-law left, I was getting ready to take the dog out and heard my wife call my name from the living room. "Just a minute," I said. "I'm taking the dog out."
Now there are times when you can pick up on tone, and this was one of those times. She called me again, to which I replied (tone missed on this try), "Just a ..." - "JASON, COME HERE!" Tone received ... registered in brain ... dog can wait.
I proceeded to the living room to see my wife kneeling next to the couch where my 4-foot tall 67-pound son was lying. As I got to her side I could see the reason for the “tone” in her voice. Now when I say "tone" I'm not suggesting that there was yelling or sarcasm in her voice. It's hard to explain, but I new she was dead-serious. It was a tone that said, "GET IN HERE - I NEED YOUR HELP NOW."
To my dismay I saw what looked like vomit coming out of the corner of my sons mouth as he was lying mostly on his side. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him lightly and said his name. Then I shook him again - this time not so lightly - and raised my voice to the level of what we call in our house “loud talking”.
Tristan did not move, and at this point a cascade of triage from years of training went thru my head but emotions that I had not been prepared for took a hold of me as well. In discussing my feelings with my wife later, she remarked that she had never seen me this way before. Not outright panic, but definitely a look of "controlled fear" on my face.
After assessing the situation, I realized that my son was breathing normally was not choking or passed out. He was simply in a very deep sleep.
From the time my son Tristan was two years old, a bomb could go off in the next room, and he would sleep through it without batting a lid. Mix this with a little Benadryl and a half-chewed cookie, and that explains the sludge oozing from the corner of his mouth!
Well, now that my heart could be visibly seen pumping away at 180 beats per minute, I decided to clean him up and bring him to his nice comfy bed where the air conditioning was keeping things cool (unlike my body, which was producing mega-sweat on my forehead!).
With Tristan now safe and tucked into his bed, I knelt next to it and thanked God that my son was okay. I also thanked the Lord for this reminder I had just received that He is sovereign, and I am to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I realized how fragile life is and how undone I would be on a constant basis if I thought that the lives of my loved ones rested in my feeble hands.
Yes, we are to be good stewards of what God has given us: wife, kids, family, friends, job, etc. But are we careful to keep them in their proper place, putting our relationship with the Lord first?
Well, with all the drama of the evening now past, I decided to vacuum the house. Yeah so, 7:30 at night and I was going to vacuum. What of it? I had already gone for a run, so this was the best way to release the tension from all the adrenaline that had just rocketed through my body!
While I was pushing the vacuum around, the Lord spoke to me. Not audibly, but through His Word in my head. What came to mind was the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Abraham had a son who had been a long time in coming - a "miracle child" as it were. God promised that a great nation would come through him, and he and his descendants would have unimaginable blessings. The boy's name was Isaac, and oh, how Abraham loved him!
Imagine Abraham's shock and chagrin when one day God commanded him, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you" (Gen. 22:2).
What would you have done, had God directed this command to you? What would I have done? This is the question that weighed upon my mind. I thought about how much I loved my son Tristan, and like a wave crashing onto the shore, the thought occurred to me: "Is my love for the Lord in its rightful place?" Forgive me, Father, for putting anything - anyone - before You. An idol is anything that takes precedence over the Lord, and I needed to be reminded of this.
Now that the incident is passed and proved to be nothing serious, I can look back on it and almost laugh. Still, I can remember the heaviness of the moment. It left a mark on me - a mark of remorse for the love I had failed to show my Father in heaven.
I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice,
To worship you - oh, my soul, rejoice!
Take joy, my King, in what you hear;
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.