Day 39: Psalm 17 & 68

Summertime when I was a boy seemed eternal.

Maybe it’s the heat of the last few days that has made think of those days. Growing up in the Georgia heat, you’d be sweating by sunrise. I miss the morning fog, the dew on the grass. I miss the evenings, when the day finally burned off and you could hear the cicadas making noise as you caught lightning bugs. Watching my boys grow up makes me miss all of it.

I’ve started to call 2020 insomnia year, because if you’ve ever had insomnia, you know you are never really a sleep and you are never really awake. This year for the kids feels like that, they aren’t really in summer and they aren’t really in school. You aren’t really at work and you aren’t really at home. In some strange way, it all feels like summers when I was growing up, you lost track of the days and it all felt like it would go on forever.

The hidden treasure of these days; is the extra moments with the boys at our house. Our lives aren’t compartmentalized, them at school and me at work, we are all in the same space. I see their need for power, fun, adventure and their need for security. It all reminds me of those summers. I’d get lost building forts with my neighbor Chad because I wanted adventure, but I couldn’t do my own laundry. I think more than ever, I see why in the Psalms and other places God calls himself a Father. He uses father language and so does the Psalmist.

Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings Psalm 17:8

Isn’t that what you wanted from your dad? I see it in my boys need for my attention.

God even says this:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. Psalm 68:5

HE wants you to know that even if that person who found you when you were lost in the summer is gone, or if that person who once held you as the apple of his eye has aged beyond that father role, God will take his place. They say that a crisis can remind you of what matters the most.

For me, it’s the importance of being a father, and the importance of seeing God as a Father too. You are the apple of his eye.

Jared