by RW MacAlisdair

Created on: May 20, 2008

My Dad had a pretty interesting life. He was the kind of man who may not have always been the same kind of person that he seemed to be. The guys in the lumber mills that he worked in may not have known he preached on Sunday morning and it would not have been because he didn't act like a preacher during the week. It would most likely have been because he just didn't LOOK like a preacher when he was man handling wood. I have never known too many people who were physically stronger than my Dad. Popeye's fore arms with his spinach diet had nothing on my Dad. In fact, in looking through an old yearbook from the 1930's we found that he even had the nickname "Hercules" when he was a kid in school.

Then again, if you heard his mild mannered voice when he preached on Sunday you would never have guessed that he spent all week working hard with a bunch of guys who might never have even seen the inside of a church. (Of course, as his son who might not always have listened as close as he should have, I knew that mild mannered voice could change in an instant). The thing about my Dad was that he never really quite thought of himself as either the confident polished preacher OR the strong and tough guy who could take on the world. He generally never really gave himself quite as much credit as he may have deserved.

He did, however give his family some very unique gifts that have proven to be quite valuable over the years. While no one who becomes a parent ever is really nave enough to think of their own parents as perfect, there are a few of us who have been blessed enough to find that we have been given some advantages that have not seemed to have been supplied to the general population. I would like to take a few minutes to share some of those today.

One of the greatest gifts that my father gave us was his overwhelming belief in the greatness of God. He was able to share his conviction with us that God is good, strong, loving, kind and most importantly, absolutely real and alive. You could not grow up in our home and hope to believe any differently ... and this was not something that you had drilled into you by excessive preaching. He simply believed it and by the force of the example of his own belief, we could not believe otherwise. This gift of faith is something that I will always treasure and can only hope to give to my own children in some small measure.

The gift that my dad gave us that relates to this one in no small way is the unassailable belief that the Bible is God's

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