It was a cool February afternoon, our family piled in our aptly named Escape heading East on the I-8. We weave our way through Laguna Summit and the Cleveland National Forest, summiting the final miles of California and her Santa Ana Mountains on our way back to our home in the Sonoran Desert.
We just visited Concordia University, Irvine, a Lutheran school where our eldest, Camille, was offered a generous scholarship. Camille fell in love with Concordia’s professors, mission, and solid theological foundation on the trip. We rejoiced at her finding such an ideal fit. And we mourned her impending departure.
“What is your best wisdom for my college years?” Camille asks.
It is an earnest question from a humble heart. And all of a sudden I felt it. Her question hits me in the chest and my heart drops. What more wisdom can I offer? What bullets are left in the chamber? What gold nuggets are left in the chest? I search and come up empty.
I’ve given you everything I have, Camille. I don’t have anything left. I’ve poured my heart into yours. You already know the best of what I know. I’ve taught you from the heights of my proudest achievements and from the valleys of my most profound failures. Looking back, those vantage points seem desperately inadequate.
I wish I had something left, but I don’t. I wish I had a secret I had saved for your final days of childhood, but there isn’t one.
All I have is me. The only wisdom I have is my life and the work of Christ in me.
When speaking to the church at Corinth, a congregation with rampant issues involving everything from unchecked sexual deviance to racial division to the oppression of the poor, Paul seems near his whit’s end many times. When answering the anger of the church for him eating food sacrificed before idols with Gentiles, Paul appears exasperated, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me” (1 Cor 9:1-3). Paul then calls them to turn and flee from the real threat of idolatry: the threat that resides in their hearts and is manifest in their selfishness and divisiveness. He concludes simply, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
“Be imitators of me.” When I heard those words when I was younger, I wrestled with what felt like Paul at the cusp of pride. I thought to myself that Paul avoided pride because of how conformed his life must have been to the person of Christ. Paul could offer these words confidently because of how holy he was.
I read Paul’s simple admonition very differently, now. I hear a man poured out, tired, and weary with hands outstretched. “I know that words are not enough for you. I know that others will come along whose tongues are gilded with more gold than my own. What remains is my life. Can you see Christ in my life? Can you? If you can see any measure of the character of our Lord, that is what I give you.”
I resonate with Paul. “If, to others I am not a pastor, at least I am to you, Camille and Soren, for you are the seal of my pastorship in the Lord.”
I’m not tired or weary because fathering Camille has worn me down. Camille, you have been a joy. You’ve always been a joy. Well, almost always. I’m not tired or weary because I’ve had to fight other voices in Camille’s life.
But I am poured out. I have never felt so empty as a father. And after so many hours in the Bible together, so many hours in prayer, so many father-daughter talks, I realize just how little I’ve had to give. The only good things I’ve ever given her are from Christ.
And the best thing that I could give her is myself. Christ-in-me, my only hope in life and death.
“What is your best wisdom for my college years?” Camille asks.
I rack my brain. My empty hands extend.
“Imitate me, as I, through the Spirit, imitate Christ.”
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Photo Credit: John Beeson, 2022