What does it take?

When there is unresolved disagreement with an otherwise respected colleague, when there is estrangement from a loved one, when there is imagined ostracisation, when one person believes that "God has said" and another opposes it - what does it take to reconcile them, to restore trust and relationship? When God seems distant and irrelevant, when strong prayers go unanswered for years, when pleas for God to reveal himself hit brazen heavens, what does it take to convince us
that truly He heals all our diseases? Although I will not give up asking.

In a post of many years previous I described my relationship with my father, he being of few but memorable words. I always respected him and many of my principles by which I live are founded on his input. But then I did this community thing, and he after my mother died did his thing, and we drifted apart. I in Northern Ireland with very little liberty to travel having given all for the common. He, having moved in and become part of another family in an arrangement that I may never comprehend but one in which he also had given all for another common. We met once. Somehow I had managed a trip to the UK. I knocked on this family's front door in Old Alresford. It was clear that I was not welcome but I forced my way in and was able to sit with my father for a little while. His love for me was evident although stifled and he gave me some money, but the whole episode was strangely surreal.  He died not long after and to my shame to this day I do not know the details of how and why. In his will he left me the contents of his workshop and I still treasure the little I was able to redeem from this. He had already given away the rest of his estate. What would it have taken to completely restore our relationship with him to what it was when I was a child?

What does it take, or what will it take, for those powerful words "Well done, good and faithful servant" to apply to me? To stand secure on that Rock? To know no shadow of doubt, to know the warmth of His presence, to know total shalom peace? What does it take for any man to say "my Lord and my God"?