My father came from a large family.  At an early age he learned how to catch fish, and not just go fishing.  He realized he was helping to put food on the table for his family, but he also discovered how much he enjoyed it.  He became a good fisherman.

When I got old enough to go with him he started teaching me.  One of my father’s favorite places to fish was on a creek.  You wade in the water from fishing hole to the next fishing hole.  Along the way nature is all around you, including the occasional snake.  I watched as my father remained calm and deal with them, so though I learned which ones were poisonous I also learned how to stay safe.  I respect snakes, but I do not have a fear of them.  Now, I come across a tiny spider in the house, I’m squealing like a school girl and yelling for my wife to come kill it!

One night, while we were in the creek catching our bait I said, “Dad, I’ve got a snake up against my left leg.”  “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” he replied as he continued picking up crawdads.  He moved in behind me and grabbed the snake by the tale and gave it a good toss.  It was not poisonous and the ones that were, he killed.  My father was my hero, my deliverer.

Several years later, we were on the creek, and dad was in some deep water when a snake came at him.  He tried like crazy to push the snake away with his fishing pole, but the snake kept coming and getting closer.  Dad started screaming while I remained safe on the bank laughing.  After he got the snake to go away from him he expressed his displeasure of my reaction to, according to him, “his close call with death”.  (The snake was not even poisonous.)

“Dad, why are you so angry?  You’re not afraid of snakes,” I said.
“Are you kidding me?  I hate those things.  I am horribly afraid of them!” he replied.
All those years I had no idea.  My father faced one of his greatest fears.  He did that for me.

God, my Heavenly Father, doesn’t fear anything at all, but He too had to do something He didn’t want to.  He allowed his only son, Jesus die on a cross to take on the sins of all of humanity.  It grieved him, and in the final hour, because God is Holy and cannot even look at sin, had to turn away from his son while he was dying a horrible death.  He did it for me, but He also did for you.  That’s how much God loves us.  Here it is, in its simplest form:

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.  John 3:16-18 (MSG)

God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit are my heroes, my deliverers.

Copyright © 2021 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.