I have an idea for a new national holiday…an observance of a principle so key to human joy and satisfaction that I’m amazed no one has yet suggested it. My holiday would be called “Dependence Day,” and it would be celebrated 365 days a year, year after year, until time ceases to be measured.
Probably the reason no one has suggested Dependence Day before now is that we’re celebrators of independence, not dependence. But we are meant to rely completely on One who loves us like no other!
In Hosea 13:4, God says to Israel: “You were to know no God except Me, for there is no savior besides Me.” God illustrates His pursuit of His wayward people through the life of prophet Hosea, who pursued, married, was deserted by and then rescued a faithless prostitute named Gomer.
Peter Parker didn’t ask to be Spiderman. He was a slightly-geeky teenager who received a spider bite and discovered he had “gifts” that other high school sophomores didn’t.
He could spin webs from his fingertips. And defy gravity. All good stuff when your previous strong suit was chemistry, and you never got the girl.
But Peter didn’t immediately become a superhero. That took time…and tragedy. His beloved uncle was killed in a street crime that he might have prevented. As a result of this heartbreaking loss, he began to use his unplanned powers for the good of mankind.
As kids go, I was only an average risk-taker. I didn’t leap off the roof of the house, or race through busy intersections on my bike, or swallow giant jawbreakers whole. But I was ready for almost any challenge that was preceded by these three words: “Daddy’s got you.”
I heard them as I rode my training wheel-less bike down the driveway for the first time, and leaped (eyes and nose squeezed shut) into the deep end of the Quintana Oil Company swimming pool.
The words weren’t audibly spoken at other fear-filled events, but I was still certain of them when I stood at the free throw line in my first junior high basketball game, bawled my way through a newly-broken heart at sixteen, and watched my parents drive away from my college dorm the fall of my freshman year.