Fathers, Sons, and Ernest Hemingway

And A Note on Why I’m Away

I didn’t preach last Sunday, and I won’t again this Sunday…or the Sunday after that…or the Sunday after that.  In 32 years, I’ve not been gone more than two Sundays in a row except on a study sabbatical, let alone four. So I want to explain why I’ll be gone. I know that while most of my subscribers are members or friends of First Bible Church, many are not. Even so, I invite all of you to come along with me for a few minutes.

I write these words from Boise, Idaho at the conclusion of an adventure that my son Josh and I have been planning for nearly a year. A few days ago, we competed in a gravel cycling race in Ketchum, Idaho that’s been on my bucket list for a while. Basically, a gravel race is an endurance bike race on a hundred miles of gravel roads in wild places. One of the reasons I’ve anticipated this race is that for decades now, I wanted to see Ketchum, Idaho, where Ernest Hemingway lived, died, and is buried.

I’ve long been a Hemingway fan. The most obvious reason is that Hemingway could turn a phrase like no other. He had both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize to prove it.  But the other reason is because of what he wrote about. Hemingway was an outdoorsman, a hunter, a fisherman, and an adventurer. The Old Man and the Sea was not written by a novice, but by an experienced angler. The Snows of Kilimanjaro was written by a man who spent three months on an African safari. Savor the way he describes every fly fisher’s dream in Big Two-Hearted River : “As far down the long stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making circles all down the surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.” If you fish, it sends a shiver down your spine.

I prefer outside. I always have. Since boyhood, I wanted to be exploring, hiking, camping, competing, fishing, hunting, climbing, cycling, and paddling somewhere outside; somewhere far away from the crowds. If I was inside, I wanted to read books about being outside. My boyhood memories are filled with family camping trips and fishing trips. And I still have the first rifle I ever owned. It was a Christmas gift from my Dad when I turned 12.

As soon as possible, I got my son outside doing the things I loved to do. In most of those things, he became more proficient than I would ever be. And I am grateful that 36 years after his birth we are still doing many of those things together when our busy schedules permit. So, when Josh and I left that start line in Ketchum with several hundred riders from all over the country, the course led us a few blocks from Hemingway’s house, along the trout stream where he fished, and up into the backcountry where he hunted. Before we finished the course with dust-caked faces, we passed within feet of Hemingway’s Memorial which bears the words that he spoke as an epitaph for a friend who had been killed in a hunting accident. It is as if Hemingway wrote it about himself:

“Best of all he loved the fall. The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods. Leaves floating on the trout streams. And above the hills, the high blue windless skies. Now he will be a part of them forever.”

After the race, Josh and I traveled to Wyoming for a cycling tour of Yellowstone National Park, one of the most pristine natural environments left in our great nation. Gravel bikes get you into places most tourists can’t go. On that ride we got caught in a hailstorm and found shelter at a campground standing next to a man who discerned that we were father and son. He wistfully told us, “My son doesn’t want to do anything with me.” I pedaled away feeling sad for that man and grateful for my son as we turned south and headed for Old Faithful.

But adventures like this can’t last. So, about the time you get this article in your email, we’ll be on a plane heading back to Alabama. Josh will go back to work on Friday morning, and I’ll pack again to head to North Carolina for the next couple weeks.

In North Carolina is the man who gave me my first rifle. My Dad enjoyed vigorous strength and good health until he reached his eighties. But now he needs a little help entering this next season. It’s time to sell a house and make a move to a place where assistance will always be nearby. Most of his fishing days are behind him and he has already bequeathed to his grandchildren his fishing gear. His guns are in my safe. It’s been hard for him to accept (as it will be for me someday), but he’s taking it like a man.

And so, I find myself between a son in his physical prime and a father whose physical prime has long passed. In my son I see much of who I was and in my father I see much of what I’ll be. And more than ever, I am grateful that all three of us Batemans have not put our hope for meaning and purpose and fulfillment in fishing, or hunting, or paddling, or cycling, or just being outside. We know that we will never truly enjoy creation until we truly enjoy the Creator.

Though raised in an evangelical home, Ernest Hemingway left us little hope that he ever truly enjoyed the Creator and trusted in Christ alone. Yes, he had the fame, the fortune, the friends, and the fun. He famously sought pleasure in sexual promiscuity and hard drinking. He sought solace in fishing and hunting and finely crafted rifles, reels, and rods. He often found what he thought he was looking for, only to discover it didn’t satisfy him at all. He looked for lasting joy in everything except surrender to Jesus. And then one day he wrote these heartbreaking words:

I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.

Shortly afterwards, on July 2, 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho with one of his favorite shotguns, Ernest Hemingway, ended his life.

So, I’ll take a few weeks to gladly fulfill the responsibilities that rest on every son and daughter to honor father and mother. I am not alone. Many of you are doing the same thing right now. But my prayer is that when I return, it will be with a renewed and settled conviction that Jesus alone can save, and Jesus alone can satisfy. Being out in creation is ultimately meaningless without being in Christ.