Welcome back Staci Stallings!
My Father’s House
Years ago my Saturday nights were planned long
before we ever got to Friday. My friends
and I would go to church, go out to eat with my parents and then go to my house
for a long night of
whatever the game of the season was. We would stay up long into the night playing
Michigan Rummy, Pictionary, Guesstures, or Scattergories. More than once a worried parent called to
check up on a child and make sure they were at my folk’s place and not up town
running around. They were always there around
that kitchen table laughing and having a great time.
I don’t really remember how the
tradition got started, or who the first friends I invited over were. However, over the years there were a long
line of them. Theresa. Elaine. Kirsten.
Lorelea. Michael. Damian. Mike. Eventually my younger sister’s friends joined
us, and there were very few Saturday nights that our house wasn’t an all-out
party.
Now mind you, my parents were
always there. In fact, my mom seldom
went to bed before everyone left as she was often the last challenger standing
no matter what the game was. My dad, on
the other hand, had to be up at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning to go out and milk
cows. More than once, he rounded the
corner, one eye half-opened to stare at us and ask what we were still doing
awake.
We had a lot of good, honest fun in
that house, and my friends never balked at going there instead of driving
around looking for trouble. It was
simply more fun than anything else we could be doing.
Recently I’ve been looking at my life
and realizing that one of my goals is to point as many people to Heaven as I
can through my writing and through my life.
For awhile it bothered me that maybe I was saying in that goal that I
thought I was the one through which they were going to get to Heaven. Of course that wasn’t my intent, but there
was a nagging thought that maybe that’s how it would be interpreted.
It didn’t take a genius, but it did
take some soul-searching, to realize where that thought came from—Satan, the
number one instigator of doubts of all time.
Max Lucado once said that “Satan doesn’t want to convince us, he just
wants to confuse us,” and that was certainly true in this case.
It wasn’t until I thought back to
my high school years and how much fun we had at my parents’ house that I
finally put all the doubts aside. You
see, I don’t think I’m the reason others end up going to Heaven—that is their
choice and their business. However, I am
the one who can invite them to come with me to my Father’s house. I figure we’ll all be better off in Heaven
than out on the streets somewhere, so once again, my plan is to invite as many
people as I can to join me for a joyous time in my Father’s house. It worked once, I hope it works again.
Copyright, Staci Stallings 2004
Staci Stallings, the author of this article, is a Contemporary Christian
author and the founder of Grace & Faith Author Connection. Check out
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