
The Letters: How it all Began
The Letters: How it all Began
We were performing one our favorite hobbies together, my father and I, walking the isles of a local book store. Books, a shared passion Dad and I had together over many years. My library has many volumes he gifted to me, all of them inscribed inside with his wonderful and lively handwriting. “A book always has more meaning when it is signed by the giver,” he would repeat over the years.
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As we perused the many isles of the store, we passed by a table with books of current interest. On it lay a stack of books that immediately demanded his keen attention. Leather bound with a gold embossed title, he picked it up. After leafing through the book and feeling it in his experienced hands, a simple statement proceeded from him. “I’d like to have this book.” Thus, began a journey I had with my father till two weeks before he died, not but a short nineteen months later.
I was in California visiting Pops. He had just passed the 98th year marker a few days before. He had recently moved from his beloved home in Santa Barbara, California to live near my brother in El Dorado Hills, California. The need to be near one of his children had become increasingly apparent. Although he was quite healthy and able to live on his own, living in closer proximity to one of us kids would be helpful. He took up residency in an independent-living senior community, decorated his two-bedroom apartment with all the favorite mementos of his life that reminded him of his 57 years with

my mother. Taking as many books as he could from his large collection, he started a new life away from his closest friend at the time, the worn work-bench in his garage. Yes, he was a bit lost. His biggest complaint, “There are too many old people here!” We were (my sister Rena, my brother Rod and myself) trying to help him find his way in this new paradigm of life at 98. (Kudos to my brother and sister-in-law, Rod and Sandy, they were my father’s resident angels.)
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I walked over to my dad while he was holding the book in his hand and said, “Hey, let me buy that for you Pops, happy birthday!” When we got back to his place and as I silently thumbed through the pages of his new treasure an idea popped into my mind. I had been looking for a way to be a bigger part of my father’s days since his move. Kind of hard to do from Missouri. His rhythm of life had been severely interrupted with the move, not healthy. As he was sitting in his favorite reading chair, I said, “Hey Dad, how about you and I read this book together. Every day! Every day I will email you with my thoughts on the day’s particular reading. How does that sound?” His response, one word. “Great.” I had no idea how important this “great” would mean to me over the next nineteen months. What proceeded from this idea and commitment to write him every day resulted in a deep walk of ideas and thoughts between the two of us, up until two weeks before he left for heaven.

Oh, what was the book? Hope for Each Day, a beautiful book. The author, Billy Graham, was a hero of my father and his era. Graham wrote this daily devotional in 2002. Billy was bigger than life to my father’s generation. Billy was one year older than my father and had just left to be with his Savior in Heaven during my visit with Pops. As one the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century, Graham’s ripple effect on this world is still rolling outward today. I can remember clearly his strong but gentle voice coming over the PA in the Los Angeles Coliseum when I was a child. My parents were intent on all six of us in the Johnson house hearing Billy Graham at one of his crusades that eventually enveloped the world. It is said that there is no human being in all of history who has spoken to more people personally on this planet than Billy Graham, all hearing the “Good News” of Jesus Christ. Billy Graham represented something vitally important to my parent’s
generation. With a fast-changing world becoming more upside down as each decade rolled by, Billy’s message was a light in the dark, a voice in the “wilderness,” with a simple and profound proclamation; We, in this fallen world, need a Savior and his name is Jesus.
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Upon giving the copy of Hope for Each Day to my father, I inscribed the inside of the cover with these words: “To my father: Let us both pursue a deeper walk with our wonderful Heavenly Father together. 2-23-18.” That is what I believe took place for the two of us in the remaining months of his life.
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I began my daily writings to Pops on March 11, 2018, after getting home from my visit and procuring my own personal edition of the book. My father and I used Billy Graham’s Hope for Each Day as the foundation for our daily written conversations for the first twelve months of our writing journey. The remaining months before he left us, we used another daily devotional that we choose together to continue our daily written exchanges. This book, Good Morning Pops, only includes those letters based on our daily readings of Billy Graham’s great devotional book. There is much to be said about transferring one’s own thoughts and contemplations into a written expression. Clarity of floating ideas and thoughts solidify into more defined beliefs and develop a deeper bond with the writer and thus can be communicated in a fashion that is more easily transferable to another.
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I am not a theologian nor am I a Bible scholar and expositor, I am just a regular Christ follower working out my faith in my risen Christ on a daily basis. The words I wrote to my father every day for the nineteen months before he died represent only one thing: me. I do believe they represent Truth as I know it to be as a normal growing and struggling Christ follower who is daily learning to walk closer with Christ and live as a redeemed sinner in this enemy territory; the territory of the Grand Liar. The words I shared with my father are an extension of my reality as an earthly bound “born-again believer.” Those life experiences of my personal journey in these letters may only be unique to me, but I do not think so. This journey behind enemy lines for us Christ followers take many a different path, but the common and unifying thread for all of us, who are the body of Christ, is struggle, pain, forgiveness, redemption and grace. This is reality, to say it is not so, very honestly, is very strange to me. I do not identify with anyone who’s experience as a “believer” is contrary to the words of Jesus, “In this world you will have trouble.” Father God will never remove “trouble” from us or this world, to do so would require the removal of the Grand Liar (Yes, that will happen though in the future) and eliminate one of the greatest gifts He has given us, the ability to make our own choices. He only promises to bring us, His children, through the fires of life in a fashion that is inexplainable to the lost world; the ability to live in this corrupted world with the presence of joy and peace that passes all human understanding.
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Like many men of the “Greatest Generation,” words of the soul and heart were not to be found in abundance coming from my father. Love was an act to be demonstrated by duty and hard work, the very same traits that carried them through the fires and conflict of World War II. As Pops developed his own rhythm of reading these now daily letters coming his way from his son, he would respond now and then with short concise comments. These are included with each day’s writings when he did so. Most often, as I found the best time in my day to write every day, he too found the best time to read my daily letter on his iPad. This was generally around 9PM, right before he would prepare himself to retire for the day. There is no doubt in my mind and heart this journey we took together resulted in a deeper trust in his Lord. The resulting peace of this deepening relationship was evident to me in all of my interactions with Pops in his remaining months.
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My prayer and desire are for the words exchanged between Pops and myself everyday during this twelve-month period will possibly bring hope and encouragement to the reader; that my reality of the “believers” walk might intersect your life with glimmers of truth which will hasten a deeper understanding and walk with the risen Christ. To this end: that you might know the surpassing worth of calling Jesus your Lord and Savior.

Committing to write to my father every day was a new experience for me. What at first seemed a little awkward and forced became much more enjoyable and natural once I developed a mental rhythm. Eventually, writing the daily email-letter on my iPhone to my father became a joy and its entrenchment into my daily regimen became secure; I would find time somehow or somewhere to complete the daily thought giving. My iPhone proved to be the right tool to carry out my daily writing, allowing for a degree of convenience and spontaneity. Most writings took place in the early morning before the day’s callings took over my mind and body. A word in the verse Billy quoted for the day, a thought of Billy’s or a random thought insertion of my own; all of these created a starting point to chase for that particular day’s writing. No one writing-entry was highly thought out, I simply chased down the proverbial “rabbit hole” of an idea or word, never knowing where it is was going to end up.
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