“This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.” – Jeremiah 38:4 

Have you ever had the frustrating experience of being ignored when you tried to offer advice to someone in an effort to protect them, warning of something you know to be potentially harmful?  Or perhaps you were the one who ignored the warning and suffered the consequences.  Most of us have.  An example might be a mother warning her small child to not touch the burner on a hot stove.  (I did that once when I was four-years-old, and I still remember those painful burns on my fingers.)

Once I recall getting crossways with one of our hiring managers who was insistent on recruiting a certain individual who was well known to me for having a long history of creating turmoil and conflict.  Yet, despite my warnings the manager hired him anyway, assuring me he could control the guy’s behavior.  A couple of years passed, then one day I received a call from the manager admitting that I had been right and apologizing for not heeding my advice in the first place.  Had I not been guilty many times myself of failing to heed someone’s warning, maybe I would have been tempted to rub that manager’s nose in a big “I told you so.”   But the truth is, I appreciated the manager’s humility and courage to admit his error, which I believe spoke volumes about his integrity.

That little episode from my corporate career is not so different from that of the Prophet Jeremiah during biblical times when he tried to warn the people of Jerusalem, “Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine and plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live.”  But instead of believing Jeremiah and heeding his warning, some of the officials demanded that he be killed.  “This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin,” they cried out to King Zedekiah, then threw him into a muddy cistern where he would have died except for another official – a foreigner – who convinced the king that Jeremiah’s prophecy was in fact true.

Sometimes I think it is hard to hear the truth when the truth is not what we want to hear.  That manager did not want to hear that he was making a bad hire, so he ignored my warning.  The people of Jerusalem did not want to surrender to the Babylonians, so they ignored Jeremiah’s warning.  Thus has it often been with some of my own bad decisions, ignoring the warnings because I did not want to hear it, then suffering the consequences.

“. . . when a wise man is instructed, he gets knowledge.”  – Proverbs 21:11 

Among the many important roles she played in our family, most notable was that of being the family scholar.  She was my great aunt who we called Aunt Jenny, except that was not her real name.  Her real name was Janie, not Jenny, and to all those elementary school children she taught during her distinguished fifty-year career, and among most of the town folks where she lived, she was respectfully known as “Miss Janie”.  (That should give you a little hint about the era in which she lived and the fact she never married.)

Aunt Jenny was my grandmother’s older sister and only sibling, and always part of the scene in our family.  She lived her entire life in the same house she and my grandmother were raised in, which was right next door to my grandparents’ home, that is until my grandfather passed away and she moved in with my grandmother so they could take care of each other.  I never remember having a meal in my grandparents’ home – ever – that did not include Aunt Jenny and some of her delicious recipes.  She was part of the scene.

Aunt Jenny had more knowledge tucked away in her brain than almost anyone I’ve ever known, like a walking encyclopedia.  Because of her unceasing sense of curiosity and passion for education she was a lifetime learner well into her nineties.  She never stopped reading anything she could get her hands on, and wrote copious notes about what she learned.  We found written evidence in her tattered Bible, for instance, that she had read it all the way through at least fifty times; thus, her distinction as the go-to family scholar.

Aunt Jenny knew a lot about a lot of things, but in spite of her knowledge and intellect she never came across as a know-it-all.  She would certainly share what she knew when called upon, but I never recall her being imposing or intimidating, and I think that is because however much knowledge she had, she always knew there was more to learn.

And that to me may be her greatest legacy, not her knowledge but her wisdom.  As the Proverb says, “when a wise man is instructed, he gets knowledge,” and Aunt Jenny was wise enough to never stop seeking instruction, which is why her brain was so filled with knowledge.  Aunt Jenny, a.k.a. Miss Janie, what a gift from God she was to our family, the community she served, and the generations of children she educated!

“Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!  Should not shepherds take care of the flock?” – Ezekiel 34:2 

It was to the “Me” generation of his own time that the Prophet Ezekiel was sent to address, warning the Israelites that their self-centeredness and lack of concern for others was going to bring them down, leading specifically to seventy long years of captivity in Babylonia, until such time that eventually “I will cleanse you from all your impurities and . . . I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.”  (Ezekiel 36:24,26)

Somehow the message of Ezekiel did not sink in with me when I was eighteen years old.  At that point I was convinced my one marching order in adult life was to become successful; successful, that is, by the world’s definition of success – professional career, money, influence, all those sorts of things that offer status, bragging rights, and a big ego.  Success was all about me, I thought, about my accomplishments and all the rewards that were attached, so typical of the “Me” generation mindset of own time.

Imagine my dismay when success didn’t come like I believed it should.  Oh, it did eventually, but not before suffering some years in exile, struggling, wondering what I was doing wrong, failing (it felt like) rather than succeeding.  Had I misread the memo on success, I wondered, skimming over something essential?  Ezekiel’s message perhaps? “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!  Should not shepherds take care of the flock?”  Only then did I begin to be cleansed of impurities and gain a new heart and a new spirit.  Soon, almost miraculously, success began to happen.

No one has ever expressed this better than Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the classic Man’s Search for Meaning.  “Don’t aim at success,” he says, “The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.  For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” . . . . Woe to those who only take care of themselves!  But to those whose deepest desire is the well-being of others, success – not the world’s version, but the truest forms of it – may well catch you by surprise.  It did me.

“Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior . . . Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” – Psalm 127:3-4 

When it comes to fatherhood, I consider myself one of the lucky ones, having been raised in a two-parent home in which my dad was a devoted, loving, honest and hardworking man who was similarly raised by his parents.  As far back as I know generationally, in fact, that has been the case in my family – on both sides.  While not always a perfect father myself, nor was my father before me, it seems I have nonetheless remained true to the family tradition as evidenced by the rewards I now reap in observing my two sons being devoted, loving fathers themselves to our five grandchildren.

I am indeed one of the lucky ones!  For, according to 2022 Census Bureau data, approximately one in three children in America under age 18 lives with a single parent, 80% of whom are mothers, a disturbing statistic.  But before heaping scorn upon those (mostly) dads out there for being derelict in their responsibilities as fathers, we should probably consider that each party in that statistic represents a unique story, not all of which are contemptable.  In many cases, for instance, the parents may not live together, but both are involved in their children’s lives.  We all know couples who are divorced yet work together to provide for and be wonderful parents to their children.  In other cases the father (or mother) may be deceased.  But sadly, there are those situations, too many I am afraid, where fathers (mostly) have abandoned their duties, and that is a tragedy.

It is a tragedy for the children for sure.  But equally so it is a tragedy for the neglectful fathers who deprive themselves of the indescribable joys of fatherhood and the life-long relationships that result with children and grandchildren.  It is not unlike faith, which for those of us who have it, long that everyone could enjoy the same peace, joy, comfort, and hope we experience through having a relationship with God; so it is with the fatherless and the neglectful fathers, as those of us who know the joys and blessings of fatherhood long that every father and fatherless child could experience what we have.

“Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior . . . Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”  O that every father’s quiver could be as full as mine!

“But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands, so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” – Jeremiah 18:4 

My dad was a painter, a hobby he enjoyed off and on his entire life since early childhood.  He was quite good actually, yet few people I suspect knew except for his own inner circle.  Even though Daddy was not an overly private man, for whatever reason he was guarded when it came to his art; not that he hid it, but neither did he talk about it a great deal, certainly in a boastful way, nor was he flamboyant in the ways he displayed it.

It occurred to me recently that in all the years I knew him I never one time observed my dad painting.  I do recall seeing a few of his works-in-progress resting on an easel, but I never saw him with brush in hand.  That was something he seemed to do by himself.  Out of curiosity I did once ask what he did when he made a mistake.  I’ll never forget his quick response.  “Oh, that’s easy,” he said, “you just paint over it.”  The answer slid off his tongue so smoothly, in fact, I suspected he must have done it a million times, and maybe that’s the reason he didn’t want anyone watching.

But isn’t that the story of our lives, all of us?  We make mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder, mess after mess, only to go back and try to clean it up, redo it, start over – paint over it, so to speak – whatever it takes to transform our blunders into something better.  The Book of Jeremiah offers a great illustration when the Lord instructed Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house and observe the potter.  “So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”  Just like my dad’s paint-overs!

God does that with us, too, doesn’t he?  Sometimes we don’t turn out right – our fault, not His – and God will put us back on the wheel and reshape us as seems best for him.  Or he paints over our mistakes and blunders giving us a fresh start.  It’s called grace.  I sometimes wonder if that is the real reason my dad was so private about his painting, they were his moments with God when he was able to make mistakes and paint over them, and God was able to paint over the mistakes with him.  It was a place where they worked things out, shaping them as seemed best.  Don’t we all need that private time?