My Dad was 34 when he died.
I’ve been told he was a wonderful man. The eldest of five siblings, he grew up in a small house in a large town in northcentral Wisconsin—where strong values were the norm. His father was a rural postman—a good and guarded man of solid faith and concrete conviction. His mother was cut from the same cloth, and so Dad, with his two brothers and two sisters, were raised to be the same.
Even as a kid, my Dad was an avid sportsman and conservationist. He learned to fly fish and tie his own flies. He set his own traps, and he cleaned and sold his own pelts. Before he was even a teenager, he learned to ski jump with the other neighborhood daredevils and earned his own trophies.
As he grew to manhood, he formed, with some of his closest friends, a tight-knit fraternity of fly fishing buddies—calling themselves the “Lunkers.” The like-minded members ranged in age from one of Dad’s high school teachers to his younger brother, Hans. They set the bar high for admittance into the club—you had to have successfully netted a good-sized trout (I can’t remember the exact size requirement, but it had to be BIG), and you had to always obey the fish and game rules. No exceptions. Fishing legally 100% of the time also meant that some of Dad’s other fishing buddies would never attain to be a “Lunker.”
Dad was a man of integrity. When the war broke out on American soil on December 7, 1941, Dad determined (with thousands of others) to sign up and serve. He didn’t have to, yet he felt compelled to enlist—it was the right thing to do. Without reluctance, Dad walked into the recruiting office and said, “Send me.” He chose the Army Air Corps, hoping to be a pilot, but his eyesight was too poor for that job. Instead, he became a radio operator on troop transport planes in the South Pacific.
During the war, he contracted diseases typical of anyone not accustomed to jungle living. The germs he picked up—particularly strep—were never completely killed off during wartime, and they continued to do their evil work long after the war ended. He came home from Japan in the fall of 1945, unbeknownst to him, with a time-bomb still ticking in his body.
He married my mother, reconnected with the other Lunkers, and followed in his own father’s steady footsteps as a rural postman. My sister, Jeannie, was born in 1948, and then my sister, Jeri, in 1951. The very day, in late September 1953, that my Mom was admitted to the hospital to have me, Dad was already there.
He’d hurt his back doing strenuous conservation work on the Lunkers’ prized trout stream, Elk Creek. While recouping in a room on one floor of the hospital, my Mom was in labor on another. “Surely this time we’ll get it right,” he joked in his journal when he’d found out that a “Mrs Buckli” had indeed been admitted into the maternity ward. “After all, a man needs a son to inherit his hunting and fishing gear!” But before the page could even be turned, he described his unreserved delight in discovering that he was NOW the proud father of THREE girls.
But, it was during that hospital stay that Dad also learned about the ticking time-bomb in his body—and that it was about to go off. The untreated strep had, in just a few years, destroyed all but a third of one kidney. There were no transplants in those days, and they gave him little hope—with maybe two years to live.
And he did. He LIVED those two years in joy and HOPE, as much as his waning strength would allow. Though there was little they could do for him, my Mom’s faith never wavered. She asked the doctor at the veterans hospital, “How am I going to get him off the morphine when he gets better?” She believed with every fiber that God would heal him. So many folks were praying and believing earnestly for just that.
Then, ten days shy of my second birthday, the LORD arrived in Dad’s room—right on schedule. A day or two before, Dad had sat on the edge of his hospital bed and sang to my Mom: “God be with you ‘til we meet again” … with tears flowing through all the verses. She had no idea of what he already knew. Mom later described the moment of his departure, “He just looked into the air, past me, and with characteristic enthusiasm said, ‘LET’S GO!!’ And he was gone.”
I have imagined that moment myself. I’ve pictured Jesus coming into Dad’s room for that final troop transport, and Dad saying, “Wait. LORD, all I want to do is to see my little girls grow up! Just let me live to do that!”
Then I see Jesus, in His love and kindness, saying, “Gordon, your body is weak. You need to rest. Tell you what, you come home with me today, and I’ll take over for you Myself. I’ll step in and be the ‘Dad’ for your little girls.”
“Okay, then … let’s go!” And He did.
God was true to His promise. “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” (Psalm 68:5 ESV)
The Lord God became MY Dad. He stepped into the void and took over the job of caring for me, my mother, and my sisters. Many, many times in my life, I have sensed the protecting hand of the Lord over me—the Everlasting Arm under me—His advice guiding me, and His comfort sustaining me. Jesus, as good as His Word, became “ABBA, Father” … to ME. That was over 70 years ago—and Jesus is STILL my loving, forever-young Everlasting Father. MY Prince of Peace. He has never left or forsaken me.
When Moses was finally looking over into the Promised Land, I’m sure that he had one last request: “LORD, all I want to do is to see my people—my children!—enter into the Promised Land! At last! Just let me live to do that!”
But, the LORD, in His love and kindness, said to Moses, “Your body is weak. You need to rest. You shall NOT go over Jordan.” And then as if to encourage his soon-to-be “fatherless children,” Moses conveyed—as a final benediction—the words of the Faithful God: “The LORD your God himself will go over before YOU … as (he) has spoken … Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:2-6 ESV)
No matter how much we know Him, and love Him, and trust Him, we cannot see what God sees. We never will. He sees future events clearly, and He prepares our way before us. “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV)
He is infinite, yet we KNOW that He sees and cares for us, finite though we are. “For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly.” (Psalm 138:6 ESV)
We will never understand God’s hidden ways for “the secret things belong to the LORD our God …” But, our Father’s kindness, faithful provision, unmerited favor, boundless grace and mercy, and the riches of His Word—these things we DO see every single day. These are the “things that are revealed (and) belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29 KJV)
This Memorial Day, I’m remembering you, Dad. And just so you know, the LORD Himself has walked with us always—just like He said.
