Our Father's Ways - Lent 2020
If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on,
you do know him and have seen him… Don’t you believe that I am
in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not
just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
John 14:7, 10
In the late 1880s, George Bird Grinnell visited the Pawnee Agency in Indian Territory. He went to visit his longtime friend, Eagle Chief, and explained, “We have come down here to… ask the people about how things used to be in olden times, to hear their stories, to get their history, and put these things down in a book.”
After some thought, the chief responded, “It is well that they should be put down, so that our children, when they are like white people, can know their fathers’ ways.”
Eagle Chief understood the importance of having a written history of the culture, customs, and traditions of the Pawnee tribe to pass down to its children. He knew that the “old secrets” of the Pawnee people were being lost as the elders of the tribe died, taking with them many of the old ways.
The difference between Pawnee children knowing their fathers’ ways and a Christian knowing our Heavenly Father’s ways is an eternally profound one.
The Bible, the inerrant Word of God, tells the story of Jesus Christ and his life spent modeling the ways of the Father. Jesus knew His Father’s ways because the Father lived and dwelled within Him. We, too, can know the Father’s ways, through the power of the Holy Spirit, when Christ lives inside of us.
The unique ministry of Lutheran Indian Ministries brings the Good News of salvation, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to our Native brothers and sisters so they, too, can know the Father’s ways and live accordingly.
Father, thank you for revealing your ways to us through the life and death of your beloved Son, Jesus. Send your Spirit to us that we may know your will for our lives and walk in your ways all the days of our life, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.