A Message In My Dad’s Suits

My mother and I are in a mood of celebration this week-end.  We have finished!  Well, we have finished with the inside of the house.  Every room, closet, and drawer has been sorted, cleaned, and rearranged.  It feels just, well, ahhhhhhh so good. On Monday I will begin on my Dad’s office outside and also the garden shed.  Then everything will be completely made like new.

Yesterday we completed our last task in taking all my Dad’s suits to the Salvation Army Store.  I checked every pocket and smiled as I removed the occasional cough drop from a side pocket or a tissue from an inside breast pocket.  As I lay each suit aside I could hear past conversations in my mind.

“Vickie, would you help me find a tie for this shirt?”

“Sure Dad, I’ll be right there.”

“Do these blue socks match my suit?”

“They’re not blue, they’re green.”

“Green?  I thought these over here were green.”

“No Dad, those over there are brown.”

“Brown?”

A tear came to my eye along with a smile on my face as I listened to his voice sound out in my memories.  It was sweet sadness.  Then came another imagined conversation in my mind.

“Dad, we’re taking your suits to the Salvation Army.”

“Good.  There might be some folks who need them.  I like helping people.”

“I know you do, Dad.  You’re still helping people with your suits even though you’re not here.”

Then the thought came, “Old things are passed away and all things are become new.”

As I reflected on that verse in II Corinthians 5:17 I thought about the truth of that statement.   Life is a constant passing away of things old but God is constantly making new the very things that have gone.  My Dad has passed from this earth and He is made new in Heaven.  His old suits are passed from his ownership and will be a new suit of clothing to someone else.  The tears of sadness that  appear today, pass away, replaced with the newness of joy in Father’s own fresh strength and peace.

We need only recognize the old, give the old to Father, and take the new strength, new courage, new wisdom, and new joy He has to give us in all our situations.  It’s a lovely promise from our Father that old things are passed away and all things are become new.