My father stood six-foot-one.

Thankfully, my younger brother got his height and is at least six feet tall.

I am a petite five feet like my mother.

But, I think I resemble my father, who preached God’s Word, by writing about God’s Word in this column every week.

I once heard a memorable story about a father and son who resembled each other. A young paramedic was riding in the back of an ambulance with a terminally-ill man. The ambulance was transporting the patient from a hospice facility to his home to die.

While the paramedic and the frail, older man traveled together, they struck up a conversation. The man, lying flat on his back on the stretcher, noticed a familiar last name on the badge pinned to the shirt of the young man beside him.

The paramedic’s face also reminded him of a person the sick man knew decades before. He asked the young man if his father ever served in the Navy. A “yes” answer was followed by questions of where and when.

The pair put two and two together and realized the paramedic’s father and the patient spent a tour of duty at the same Navy base.

In fact, they had been co-workers repairing airplane engines.

A short time later, the older man passed away. His widow contacted the paramedic with a message from her husband. “Tell your dad I’m on his team now.” The now-deceased man evidently wanted the younger man to let his father know about a life-changing decision the man had made before he died.

He wanted to tell his Navy buddy he had believed in Christ and received forgiveness for his sins a few years earlier. The wife went on to describe her husband as a changed man after that decision.

The paramedic’s father couldn’t recall a specific instance when he would have shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with his co-worker. All he could figure was that living a Christian life in front of his Navy buddy must have made an impact. The father felt overwhelmed and humbled at the thought of his example’s long-lasting impression on this fellow.

Not only did the son resemble his father physically; but the father obviously resembled His Heavenly Father, spiritually speaking, by the way he lived his life.

When one of the disciples asked Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus said, “….he that has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

You and I can have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father, if we believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, and receive forgiveness for our sins (John 1:12). Jesus taught us by His example, “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19 NIV).

In 2 Corinthians 6:18, we read these words, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters.” If we are children of God, people will see the resemblance of our Father.

 

-Jan White is an award-winning columnist. She can be reached at jwhite@andycable.com.