Henri Rouart and His Daughter Helene by Edgar Degas
"How Would You Like to Spend the Day with Daddy?"
Blazoned upon most of our memories are the terrible images of September 11, 2001. Some of us even bear the indelible memory-scar of our emotional shock that day.
But I want to share with you a different memory from that day, and a different emotion.
But I want to share with you a different memory from that day, and a different emotion.
Schools throughout Dallas went on immediate lock-down, and panicked parents fled to those schools to pick up their most precious cargo. One of those parents had two offices, one in Dallas and the other in the World Trade Center.
Thankfully, that day, that daddy was in Dallas.
Thankfully, that day, that daddy was in Dallas.
When he arrived at the school, the principal summoned the daddy’s little first-grade girl. The daddy was standing outside the entrance to the elementary school when she appeared. He bent down, took her up in his arms, and said,
“How would you like to spend the day with Daddy?”
Our current atmosphere feels like September 11th, but in a different way.
9/11 was sudden, swift, and graphic; the current attack is silent, slow, and hidden; but both events have a similar emotional effect upon us: fear, even terror.
But it’s not that emotion about which I’m writing,
9/11 was sudden, swift, and graphic; the current attack is silent, slow, and hidden; but both events have a similar emotional effect upon us: fear, even terror.
But it’s not that emotion about which I’m writing,
Think about that daddy’s arms, how his heart must have beat with anxious anticipation when he drove to the school, and how his heart must have overflowed with love when he took his little girl into his arms.
And think of the joy and consolation that little girl must have felt when her daddy’s arms took her up and she heard those words, “How would you like to spend the day with daddy?”
And think of the joy and consolation that little girl must have felt when her daddy’s arms took her up and she heard those words, “How would you like to spend the day with daddy?”
Within the difficulty of our current moment, we have a unique opportunity to “spend the day” with our most valuable possessions, perhaps many days, to hold them in our arms, so to speak.
My memory of that moment in Dallas, and my consciousness of the rough parallel we now experience, reminds me that, not only do we have an opportunity to hold our loved ones, we also have an opportunity to be held, which brings to mind other Arms reaching down to us, and the voice of another Father who says:
“The eternal God is thy refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
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