How to Overcome an Absent Father

One of the fringe benefits of a 19-year career as a sportscaster was not necessarily free admittance into the games, although that was nice. It also provided opportunities to know my father better.

You wonder, What does Lisa mean by that?

People watched me on television and realized I was the little girl my dad, a local physician, left behind. He died suddenly from a heart attack two months before I was born while competing in a polo match. Because of that, my father’s empathetic friends shared memories of him, generally through unsolicited letters, writing about various encounters they had with my late father.

One man, who served with dad as a military doctor in the Air Force, penned everything he recalled about my dad, good and bad. He knew it would give me a more vivid snapshot of the man I never had a relationship with.

I can remember eating at a local Mexican restaurant one day. A gentleman recognized me and asked if I was Dr. Bill Burkhardt’s daughter. When I said, “yes,” he began to gush about how my dad recommended him for a promotion in the military and how it made a huge difference in his retirement benefits. He never had a chance to thank him, so he profusely thanked me.

Through all the sharing, I recognized my father was kind-hearted, gregarious, driven, and maybe a little too much into material stuff.

I wanted to know it all, even the bad, because I longed to know my father better.

Today, I long to know my heavenly Father better. What about you?

Every day, I immerse myself in the Word and ask, “Show me something new about you, Abba.”

One way to understand God in a more intimate way is to study the life and teachings of Jesus. The disciples spent a lot of time trying to get a handle on who Jesus was, and wanted to comprehend his relationship with God. They figured if Jesus would give them a sneak peak at God the Father, then they’d understand Jesus’ Father-Son connection better.

However, in John 14:9, Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” Jesus went on to tell the disciples that it was his Father, living in him, who did the work through him.

Due to faith in Jesus Christ, we are also God’s children, and if we are God’s children, the Father lives in us as well through his Holy Spirit. It’s important to study and know our Father better to tap into what he desires to accomplish in and through us.

So today, ask your heavenly Father to reveal something new about his character to you. Strive to be more like him in that attribute. After all, he is the perfect Father and you are a chip off the old block.