An April Fool

 

I'm reminded of my Dad today.  After all, it is April the first.

 

April the first was the day Daddy met Jesus.

 

It was 1976, 38 years ago today.  Dad was 27 years old, and had been running full speed through the wild life for a very long time.  There's no need to go into a fully detailed description of his exploits.  Suffice it to say, the man was a sinner in every sense of the word.  A man determined to split hell wide open with a grin.  And then Jesus came.

 

Dad was working construction in the Texas Panhandle, paired with a master electrician who was born again, Spirit filled, and on fire for Jesus.  Upon meeting, Hugh looked at my Dad and said, "I can tell by the way you're talking that you don't know the Lord."

 

Dad's response:  "What the *&%$@# do you mean I don't know the Lord?"  Enough said.

 

We don't know how long it took, but day after day after day Dad was confronted with the consistent witness of a man who wasn't going to give up on sharing Jesus Christ with someone who so desperately needed Him.  Even if Dad didn't know it.  Every day, Dad would come home so angry about the "Jesus freak" at work, swearing he was going to kill him and hide the body where no one would find it.  Incidentally, it wasn't the only murder Dad was planning.

 

But one particular Wednesday, Dad came home and something was different.  He was still angry.  Furious, in fact.  He and Mom got into a fight.  He threw me into the cab of his pickup and we went for a drive into the country, where he parked in the middle of a prairie dog town and took out a joint to calm his nerves.  This might be one of my earliest memories; I can remember standing on the seat beside him begging him not to light up.  He kept elbowing me away saying, "Shut up!  Just shut up!"  But instead of smoking it, he tossed it out the window and drove back to town.

 

Mom was at the kitchen sink with the dishes when he came back in.  Wordlessly, he went into our bathroom, filled the cast-iron, claw-footed tub and sank nose deep in the water.  And there he began to weep.  The daily dose of gospel broke through the hardened heart of a man far from God, and things began to change.  After a while, he called Mom to the tub and asked her to find the number for a certain church 15 miles away.  "Tell them we're on our way."

 

Church was over by the time Dad pulled into the parking lot of Lamar Full Gospel Assembly in Pampa, Texas, but there was a light on in the foyer, and a man standing at the door waiting to let them in.  Dad and Mom were taken to the pastor's study, where Pastor Gene Allen and a handful of others had gathered to meet them.  And at first sight, my dad looked intently at that pastor and said, "Preacher, I just want to know one thing.  Can you lead a man to God?"  Gene Allen could; and that night he did.

 

On April Fool's Day, 1976, God saved my Daddy, transformed him from a sinner into a saint, led him from darkness into the Light of life, lifted him out of the miry clay of a ruined and wasted life and gave him new footing on the Rock that is Jesus Christ.  And Dad never looked back.  For 22 years, he pursued the Lord with every ounce of strength, with every fiber of his being, until the Lord called Him home.

 

So whenever April First approaches, I'm always reminded of what the powerful grace of God did for me when he saved my Dad.  Thank you Jesus!