I am reading Rob Bell’s book “Sex God” (how’s THAT for a provocative title?). One of the stories he tells (p. 27) reminded me of my dad, Paul Ludwig Steege. His birthday is tomorrow (he would have been 77). I can hardly believe he’s been in heaven for 24 years.

Here’s the story:

Moby Dick

Dad worked for the 3M Company for almost 25 years and for his work, he often traveled. When I was in about 5th or 6th grade, I got a needlepoint kit that I thought my dad would like. My mom, knowing that Dad would probably not hang a Moby Dick needlepoint on his wall, AND being a magical seamstress, turned it into a shower kit which I gave Dad for Christmas. Masterpiece. :-)

When my dad died over ten years later, at age 52, my mom and I were going through his things. I wept when I came across the shower kit: zipper broken, the inside stained from bursting toothpaste tubes, smelling like his aftershave, overflowing with the toiletries from his latest trip. My mom told me that no matter how many times she offered to get him a new shower kit, he refused. Clearly he valued the shower kit because he valued the creator of the shower kit.

I get it. We value what is around us (especially the people around us) because we value the One who created them. We see in the wounded and bruised creation, the spark of the Creator. We embrace and love what God has created because we embrace and love Him.

Endnote: the first Christmas after my dad died, my mom gave me the Moby Dick needlepoint in a frame (see photo above). Precious.