Strength for Today

One image of my father sticks with me from my youth. I was only about nine years old when Dad took me to downtown Chicago to the Pacific Garden Mission. I had never been to a mission before, and I was scared to death. The place was filled with smelly, filthy, loud men, people I had never been in contact with before. In my sanitized world there were good people. They had jobs, took baths, got married, and went to church. And there were bad people. They lived on the street, drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, didn't have jobs, and never went to church. Such is the mind of a nine-year-old. These men were so bad according to my calculations that they were off the scale. I don't remember much of what happened that evening. I just have an image of my dad with his arm around a lice-infested man who reeked of liquor and garbage, telling him that Jesus loved him. My sanitized version of the world was knocked completely out of whack. There was my clean-cut pastor father, touching a "bad" man.

I learned a lot about Jesus that night. I learned a lot about the gospel. I learned a lot about forgiveness. And I learned a lot about my father. ~ Jack & Jerry Schreur, For Dad from a Grateful Heart