I will never forget Friday, July 23rd, 1982.

My dad had been admitted to the hospital the Thursday evening prior to that. Around 2:00am Friday morning, my mom received a phone call from the hospital saying that she needed to get there as quickly as she could.

He died that morning.

It was two weeks before I turned five, so there are many details that I just don’t remember. But I do remember the funeral a few days later. I remember entering the funeral home and smelling all the flowers. To this day, smelling flowers instantly triggers memories of that day. I remember walking over to the casket where my dad was. I remember being too short to see, so I stood on a chair and looked at him laying there.

I wanted to touch his hands. Those powerful hands that had picked me up. Those hands that I had rushed into when he came home. But now, those hands didn’t move, they were lifeless. I remember tears falling. Later in the funeral procession that led to the cemetery, I remember laying my head on my mom’s lap and crying my eyes out. But it was also at that same time, that I felt comforted. Almost like an unseen comforting presence had settled next to me in that car.

The days following are blurry to me. But in the midst of all of the pain and anguish, I felt a sense of comfort. It was, and still is, hard to explain. But I knew that things were going to be all right.

A few years later, my grandfather, Pop-Pop, challenged me to read the Bible through. It was a big task for me, but I saw him reading from God’s Word every morning and night, so I aspired to do that too. One day as I read through the Psalms, I came to chapter 23. I had heard the words before many times in church, I probably even had them memorized. But this time, they made perfect sense.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Ps. 23:4

In an instant, I knew why I felt at times, an overwhelming sense of comfort, even though I had been going through the most challenging time of my life.

As believers in Christ, this is how we survive tough things like the death of a father. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it would be like to try to manage a crisis without the comfort of the Good Shepherd. Its not that we understand why we are experiencing the crisis, but its the comfort that the Good Shepherd provides that enables us to make it. 

Today as you and I go throughout our day, may we be present in the lives of the people that we encounter. We don’t know if they are silently suffering. Maybe we can spread a little comfort to those we see.