by Jeff Schinstock,
Director of Religious Education
Growing up on a farm in southwestern Kansas, I always watched my dad, my grandfather and my uncle, and marveled at all the things they knew.
My favorite days usually involved a major mechanical job; we had lots of equipment that needed regular maintenance. On those days we were all four together and I would marvel at the conversations. There was always baseball talk, but they knew history and politics. There was also some religious discussion, often involving our own local parish.
I was the gopher. “Jeff, go-for the 12-inch crescent,” or “Jeff, go-for a 9/16 socket on the ½ inch rachet.”
Of course, at the time I had no idea how much genius was there; mechanical, agricultural, or even financial. The gift of being taught about markets was a real example of what I took for granted.
Sometimes I tried to sneak away—being a gopher wasn’t the glamorous work I envisioned when I would beg Dad to take me along. They always saw me leaving, and sometimes they would let me go and discover an adventure. I loved those moments, but what was better was when they would find me and explain our own family history of my newest discovery.
God is a father in that same way. Many times in my life I have found myself uninspired at what seemed like a menial task laid out for me by the Father. Often, I would drift off on my own. Like when I was a little boy, I often thought that nobody was aware of my drifting and that on my own, I could discover the greatest adventures.
Of course, God always knew where I was. He allowed me to go off. Like my father and grandfather, he would come to me. It has been in those moments where he too would explain the true beauty, depth and historical significance of what I had encountered.
In the first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read, “for this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man.” It is important to know and hear what his reason is. He wants to share his own blessed life with us.
My grandfather passed when I was 9. I was so blessed by him. I thought of him—though I didn’t know the word—as noble. He worked hard, very hard, but he always had time. He had time for me and my questions, time for the neighbor who needed help. He had lots of time if the parish priest needed him. He made time to go and play cards at the senior center with my grandma, to have coffee several times a week with farmers in town. In all of that busy-ness, he still drew close to me to share his own blessed life.
My father is like him in so many ways. A farmer and teacher his whole life, in retirement he and my mother moved here to live by my family.
I need to be more grateful. My whole life, there have been living and constant examples to me that show the father drawing close, even when I drift. As amazing as those examples have been, it is even more true of God the Father. I can’t begin to express how constant he has been in my life. I haven’t always noticed, but he has always drawn close.
What has kept me from noticing? So much distraction. Like when, as a kid, I didn’t recognize just how amazing the moments were on the farm, so too in my adult life, I have not always appreciated the glory of the presence with me. I have learned to savor those. Gratitude has changed a lot about how I see the world and my place in it.
I think that is probably true of most of us. There is always something else that we could be thinking about. It is also true that we live in a world where there is a lot of suffering. We need to be aware of that, too.
But in the midst of our now, we ought to occasionally say hello to the one who is always with us. The one who knows where we run off to. We never actually have ever wanted to be truly alone, and praise God, we never actually are. He is right there with us. Drawing nearer as we try to sneak away.
Your own story likely has its own ups and downs. There are times it is easy to see the presence of God. Other times you wonder where He is. Our stories are not the first to be this way. The famous Psalm 22 begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet it ends in recognition of his constant presence and turns into a psalm of praise for God’s victory. You are one of God’s great victories, too.
