Fish and Dance

Last week my husband went on a date with another woman.  Well, another girl.  My daughter.  They joined about 30 other dad and daughter couples at a Father Daughter Dance.  He rented a tux.   She had sparkly gems in her hair.  I hope she never forgets it.  I know I won’t.

When I was a little girl, my father took me fishing.   I did not wear sparkly gems.  We tromped through the trees, followed a little creek up river and learned how to drop a line.  My dad put the worm on the hook.  I learned how to gut a fish and cook it on the camp fire.  This was an amazing date.

Little girls do best when they have loving dads.  I am not an expert on child physchology.   I have no scientific data to support any claims.   My entire therory is based on my own experience as a daughter and trying to raise a daughter.   I don’t by any means want to come down on single moms, I know a lot of amazing women who have single handedly raised great kids.  However, I do want to push back on a cultural phenomenen that says that dads are extraneous.  I want to yell at father’s I know who are too busy to pay attention to their little girls.  I want to explain to them that it is vitally imprtant that their daughters feel loved by their fathers.  If they don’t, those girls are sure to listen to whatever tripe the first interested boy dishes out.   If you have a little girl, pick her up and dance.   Or take her fishing.

Want some good news today?   Remember that regardless the type of father you had, that God himself wants you to call Him Father.  I love this verse:

1 John 3:1 (NIV) – “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

Check out this video and remember that God feels exactly the same about you.

http://www.lbnaz.org/videos/

Church

The Gisenyi Bridge Church of the Nazarene is a L shaped brick building. It has large stained glass windows with various colors of crosses. The roof is sheet metal. The sound booth is a wooden scaffolding with a blue plastic chair on top. The sound equipment and cords are snaked down the scaffolding and held in place with red electric tape. The chairs are all blue plastic.

The congregation came dressed in their best. The worship team all work dress black shirts. Well, all but one. One of the worship team is a man named Justin. He was one of the graduates yesterday and he wore the same shirt he had on for graduation. His best shirt is a bright green t-shirt with kittens with santa hats that says Merry Christmas.

The worship band sang several beautiful songs, they took an offering, read from the Bible. We sang. Whew. Then Pastor Larry preached. He should have been a Southern Baptist. You have not seen Pastor Larry preach until you see him preach in three languages.

Gisenyi sits only 12 miles away from the border to the Congo. As a result, the Bridge Church has quite a few Congolese refugees as members. Each service is in Swahili and Kinya-Rwanda. Today they added English. Pastor preached on Matthew 18, the story of the unforgiving servant. You can’t really tell the Rwandans anything new about forgiveness. They live it every day. But Pastor said he wanted to encourage them to continue in their amazing testament to the power of grace and he did just that. We have video.

After the triple message, six young Rwandans dressed in jeans and various red t-shirts (Bon Jovi, The Chicago Bulls) came down the aisle. They proceeded to dance… At the Cross I bow My Knee where your blood was shed for me. You tore the veil, you made a way. You know my name. I know you love me. The music was up as loud as the speakers could bear, the girls were grace in motion.

And then…it started to rain. African Big Rain. The rain came down on the sheet metal roof and it sounded exactly as if heaven was applauding. Dance. Sing. Love. Pray. Forgive