Seeing Dad's name on the Call I.D. as I moved to answer the phone, I quickly thought, "I wonder what's up?" Dad isn't the sort of person who just calls to see how you are. He assumes you are okay until he hears differently. No, usually when Dad calls he is on a mission and this morning was no different.
"Morning, Don, how are you?" is how he began and we chatted a bit about the snow and cold before he asked the particular question for which he was seeking an answer, "Is Ched going to be home for Christmas or do I need to send his gift out to him at the Academy?" There it was, Dad was inside his home, tucked in his office on this cold Winter's morning, working on Christmas cards and Christmas gifts for his grandchildren and he needed to know where they were going to be when the Wagner family gathered for Christmas. Dad, like his father before him, keeps very close tabs on his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, always desiring them to know that they - we - are connected by love and caring every day of our lives. We are family - and Christmas is one of those times in the year when special care is taken to update the mailing list and find out what is happening in each of their lives.
Our conversation immediately sent me back over fifty years ago to memories of my grandfathers, Grandpa Wagner and Grandpa Triefenbach, both of whom lived with us on the farm as I was growing up and both of whom cared deeply for their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and, in Grandpa Wagner's case, great-great-grandchildren. These are people who lived when life was not filled with the 'stuff' of our current age. If you wanted to talk to someone, you went to their home or met them at a social gathering or at church. If you wanted to know what the weather was going to do, you looked up at the sky and combined what you saw with what you observed in the animals on the farm and what you were feeling in your bones. Most often, to go to work was to walk across the yard to the barn or shed, to check what money you had you looked in your wallet or opened the sock drawer and to send word to family who lived 'away' from where you were you sat down and wrote a letter and took it to the Post Office - and waited weeks for their reply. To say my grandparents grew up in a much different time than today is like saying Jesus was Jewish . . . it is just stating the obvious, yet often overlooked, truth.
Still, the one thing that links the generations through the current day is the deep sense of 'family'. At age 97, when Grandpa Wagner had a stroke and knew he could not take care of himself and, being the strong, proud man that he was, he didn't want his kids 'to be burdened' with his care either, he sought out the care of a nearby facility, the New Athens Nursing Home, to tend to his needs. Visiting Grandpa was a regular part of our family's practice, underscoring for him in his final years that which he had established with all of us throughout his entire life, 'You are never alone. We are family.' Walking into Grandpa's room in the Nursing Home was to walk into the Wagner family history for there, on every wall, were the pictures of his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, but the pictures weren't there just for display . . . no, no, no, the pictures were there so that he could practice naming his descendants each day and, in so doing, keep his mind sharp. It must have worked because whenever we would visit he would ask about everyone by name, nearly right up to the time when he passed from this earth at the age of a hundred and a half year's of age.
Should it surprise me then that, early one morning, not long before Christmas, I would receive a call from my Dad checking in on his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren? I would expect no less. My Dad learned from the best and, perhaps, that is the greatest gift of the season: In inquiring of his family, Dad reminds each of us that, 'You are never alone. We are family.' Maybe that has something to do with why he and Mom made the church community such a central part of our family life and tradition . . . they were instilling in our hearts the abiding and resounding echo of God's inquiry concerning all of humankind through the Gift of Jesus: Early one morning, God called out to all the earth, and said, 'You are never alone. We are family.'
Pushing the 'Off' button on the phone after saying our final, "Good bye" and "I love you!", I smiled and thought, "I have a lot to live up to in my Dad . . . and I am blessed." I pray our children and grandchildren know that, by the way I live and the care I extend to them, 'You are never alone. We are family.' I pray they know the legacy into which they live is the love of family which spans the generations and includes the depth and richness of a vivid faith history. Yet, more than all of this, I pray they know the One whom, in Jesus, speaks those words to every generation and calls us to extend such love to all people for, truly, 'You are never alone. We are Family.' is the soul of God into which we are born anew each day and we can ask no more of Christmas than to celebrate such a Gift being made known.
Advent blessings on the way. Call someone, as God calls you, and let them know, 'You are never alone. We are family.'
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