Because you are sons and daughters, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” Galatians 4:6 CEB
Some theologians would say that your view of God as Father, depends a lot on your relationship with your own father. If your own father was a strict disciplinarian, then your perspective of God the Father can often be one of a God who is watching every step. To catch you slipping up. Accepting God as a loving and caring Father is much easier if your own Father was loving and caring.
In this department, I have to say that I was very fortunate. My own father had all the attributes that we ascribe to God; loving, caring, forgiving, slow to anger, kind, gracious, and merciful. He showed me what unconditional love was all about. I did not have to earn his love, for I knew he loved me no matter what I did.
My parents divorced when I was 7. Consequently, I did not live with him. Yet, he was always there when I needed him. He sat through all my band concerts in elementary school, which should earn him a special place in heaven. For I knew even at a young age that those concerts were pretty dreadful. But after the concert he would wrap his arms around me as if this was the most glorious music he had ever heard. Even though he was not much of a churchgoer, he showed me what a loving father was all about.
This Sunday is Father’s Day. Each of us has or has had different experiences with our earthly father. Some of our fathers were absent. Some may not have known their fathers. Some struggled with their fathers and may be estranged. And some, like me, were blessed to have a loving, caring father.
Yet in all things, no matter what kind of father we have or had, we have a loving Father in God, that reaches out to us in unconditional love. Who wants to redeem us, not condemn us, when we go down the wrong path. This Sunday is a day in which we are to give thanks to those who have shown us the example of the unconditional love of God the Father. A love for which all fathers should strive to express.
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