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Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind... Romans 12:2

In Heaven There Is No Rain

by Ken Ewert

The long rainy days spent on the raspberry farm were not a good memory. He told me more than once that he hated working in the rain. But he did love to work. Like many of his generation who came from the farm he could do most everything. He could tear apart and rebuild a transmission and armed with a hammer and a skill-saw, he framed his own house. He built billiard tables in his "spare" time and rebuilt wrecked cars for profit.

Often I worked with him. I remember fueling his bulldozer and mistaking the radiator for the gas tank. I also remember driving the dozer and, forgetting his warning about the low hanging maple bough, I decapitated the muffler. And I also remember while building the house, I once panicked and lowered the dozer blade—instead of raising it as he had signalled—sending some posts tumbling down. On these occasions he usually threw up his hands, shook his head, and walked away. I suppose an idiot of a thirteen-year-old son and a bulldozer don't bring out the best in any of us.

We seldom talked on a very personal level. Many of our conversations began something like: "So, how's the lawnmower running?" During my college years we sometimes argued about politics and economics. He considered himself to be right wing and me to be a right-wingnut. He was always practical and always suspicious of those peddling abstract ideas.

Growing up I don't recall him telling me he loved me. Yet I never doubted it. His care was demonstrated in his actions. When he saw that I loved golf, he bought a set of clubs so that we could do it together. When I rear-ended a delivery van, and the front end of my 1972 Celica crumpled like an accordion, it was a "write-off," but to my surprise I arrived home from school a few days later to find the front end pulled out and two new fenders, a grill, and a bumper bolted on. That was all in a morning's work for him. A labour of love.

And yet there was a hardness about him. He had left the church and rebelled against God in his early married life, and although he supported Mom and us going to church, he seldom darkened the door of the church himself. When the topic came up, he became angry and defensive. He was, my sister confided, the last person she expected to become a Christian. Though I loved him, he remained somewhat distant, and at times seemed bitter. I often felt I was not the son he had hoped for.

One spring evening I returned home from a university class and my wife greeted me and said: "Your Dad called tonight."

"Oh yeah, what did he want?" I asked as I put my books on the desk.

"Well," she said slowly and deliberately. "He said... that he has become a Christian."

I turned and looked her in the eye: "Who called?"

"Your Dad," she said.

"And what did he say?" I asked slowly, suspicious of my hearing.

"He said, 'I am calling to let you and Ken know that I have become a Christian.'"

There was a pause of several seconds, and then I asked, "Are you sure it was Dad?"

She laughed. "I asked myself the same question after he had hung up. But yes, I'm sure."

My newly-created father was the same man, yet different. A dozen years later, when he was 69 years old, I bought a parcel of property to build my house. I purchased an old Allis Chalmers bulldozer. It was a thirty-year old beast belonging in a museum, but it ran. Together we cleared brush, put in a septic field, dug a well, and dug a pond. I marvelled at his strength. When the track came off the dozer, he would pry in back on with his super-sized crow bar. I marvelled at his knowledge. When the steering clutch went, he studied the manual and working together one night in the rain, we repaired it. Even in the rain, he was in his glory, working and serving me.

How wonderfully odd, here we were again: Me, Dad, and the bulldozer. It had been thirty years since I topped up the radiator with gasoline, but more than my fueling techniques had changed. Dad had changed. Gone was his exasperation and frustration with me and with his life. In its place was a love that was practical, as always, but now also patient, kind, and contented.

It was a grey November afternoon when I drove him to his doctor. I had never driven him anywhere, but he had been sick recently, suffering from what seemed to be acid reflux.

"Well, we've pretty much tried them all, and it's unusual for the these prescription antacids not to have a pronounced effect," said the physician.

"What are the other possibilities?" I asked.

Turning to my father he said, "Not to make you alarmed, but what we worry about in men of your age is, of course, the possibility of cancer. The tests we've ordered will hopefully eliminate that concern."

The words pierced us both. As we drove home that afternoon, the mood was subdued. When we entered the driveway, Dad stopped me from getting out. "There's some things I want to say to you." he said.

I responded with a lie: "Dad, I don't think that it's going to be anything that serious. I doubt it's cancer."

"It's hard for a crusty old Mennonite like me to say, but I want to tell you that I really love you, and I am so proud that you are my son."

I loved him too, and I am proud to be his son. He has gone on to his reward with Christ, and I have no doubt that he is working for his Lord in heaven, for that is what he loved to do here on earth. And in heaven there is no rain.

Return to Volume 9, Number 2.