A father's goodness

Nearly 2 weeks ago evangelist Greg Laurie lost his son who was involved in a car accident. His recent column about his son is worth a read. In between talking of his own grief and his son's ministry Greg shares an insightful method of teaching his son about the goodness of a father, and hence the goodness of God.

There is a story I have often told about a time I took Topher shopping for Star Wars figures in the late '70s. I had told him to pick out one he wanted. He thought about it a long time and finally decided on one of the small figurines from the bottom shelf, which as I recall, was the Han Solo one.

Meanwhile, I had been looking three shelves up at Solo's spacecraft, the Millennium Falcon. I said, "Well, why don't we get this to go with your new figure?"

His little eyes lit up. "Dad! Thank you!" And he gave me a big hug.

We would come home from the toy store with some big new prize like this, and sometimes my wife would roll her eyes, because we really couldn't afford it. But then Topher and I would run upstairs to his room, plop on the floor, open up the toys and play with them together.

Looking back now, I don't regret any of it. Nor does my wife.

After a while, Christopher learned that when we were in a toy store and I asked him what he wanted, his best bet was to say, "You choose, Dad!" And I would always get him something better than he would have chosen for himself.