As I scanned ahead to the rest of the Psalm, I saw that in context God was actually speaking in judgment against his people, Israel, who, although they were called God’s consecrated ones and had made a covenant by sacrifice (v. 5), were in fact bringing sacrifices that were not pleasing to God (vv. 8-15) and living lives contrary to the scriptures they often recited (vv.16-21). In our day as well, we have many Christians who worship God with their lips and claim to be God’s people, but yet their lives are little or no different from those in the world around them. In such a context, my dad’s life stands as a testimony to us all of what it means to be a true faithful one—a true Hasid. One facebook comment this morning said of my dad, “A TRUE man of God.” And so he was.
Even in the last few years when his memory had faded, he was always kind and gentle. He may have asked the same question over and over, but you always knew that he cared. And so it had been throughout his life. He made it his business to stand at the back of the church after every service to say hello to people—to make sure he knew who they were, to ask how they were doing and to listen as one who really cared about the answer. He and my mom made it their business to invite newcomers over to the home for dinner so they knew that they were loved and cared for. He made it his business to make sure that nearly everyone in the church had the opportunity to be discipled and to grow in their faith—indeed, countless dozens now scattered around western New York and around the country trace their early spiritual formation back to the time they sat in my parents’ living room going through Basics for Believers with my dad.
Just a few days before my dad’s death, I was with him at the Buffalo ISI Banquet. He asked if I was coming home to stay with them (as I often do when I visit from out of town). I said, no, not this time, but next time I would. I didn’t go home that evening, but a few days later God called my dad home to heaven—he gathered to himself his faithful one, who had demonstrated kindness and goodness, who had cut a covenant with God to live his life as a living sacrifice to Him (Psalm 50:5). But “next time” I will go home to spend eternity with him and with our Heavenly Father and with our Lord Jesus Christ, whom my dad taught me and so many others to follow with gentleness, love, and consecrated devotion.