Happy Father’s Day

Published in Forward In Christ magazine in 2014

Sitting in a hospital rocking chair, holding that baby boy just hours after he was born, I took “the oath”.  I’m guessing most fathers have taken it at one time or another although it really isn’t written down anywhere.  It’s as much a conviction of the soul as a set of words.  With that baby in my arms I silently swore I would spend my life protecting him, caring for him, guiding him even after he was able to stand on his own two feet and care for himself without me.  As a Christian I also promised I would do my part for his soul, giving him every opportunity to get closer to God and live the faith that would receive the gift of eternal life.

That’s a lot to ask of a mortal man.  Yet it’s when our children are helpless or heartbroken that we realize it’s the commitment that must be made.   Three and a half years later I took “the oath” a second time.  It was a different hospital room, I was slightly more fatigued, but another son was trying to make sense of the strange world around him.

Over the years, as expected, I found there were limits on my ability to keep the promise. I couldn’t stop my first son from getting pneumonia.  When the second was diagnosed with autism at the age of three I was reminded that we keep the oath in different ways depending on the circumstances, not on our grand design.  Even when things worked as planned it was good to have help.  I used assistance from fellow tax-payers and fellow church members.  Sometimes my ability to guide and instruct was lost in moments of anger, the roar of a raging wind instead of the quiet breeze of patient instruction.  Through it all, my loving Christian wife and I were working to keep the same promise.  But admittedly, there were times when we were all home together and I didn’t keep the oath with the same conviction I had when I made it.

That’s why as the country marks another traditional Father’s Day it’s good to remember that God is indeed our father.  (Isaiah 63:16, Jeremiah 31:9, 2 Corinthians 6:18)  Jesus tells us God is “Our father in heaven”.  When Jesus took on flesh as the only son of God, he lived to bring all his “brothers and sisters” into that relationship.  At times the Holy Spirit moves our souls to cry out in our prayers “Abba, father”.  Like newborn infants we need those parental arms around us and have no hope if they aren’t there to care for us.  Thankfully, our Heavenly Father promised to care for all his children, telling us that he has committed himself to us with a promise having real power.

The bible also calls him father in a physical sense as well (Isaiah 64:8, Psalm 139:13).  Just as he formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, we are his offspring, his creation.  He gave us a living illustration of this relationship in the nation of Israel.  He conceived it, gave birth to it, guided it with rules of wisdom and acts of forgiveness, bore patiently with it and finally gave it the light of salvation. Yet they were rebellious children and so are we.  So, it is in Christ that we are more than just hand crafted, physical offspring, claiming the love and the promises of our father to be ours personally and powerfully.

By faith in Jesus we too, like the Israelites, are his spiritually adopted children (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:5-7, Ephesians 1:5, 1 John 3:1).  When I first took the oath, the baby in my arms was not mine legally or genetically and it was months before the adoption process was complete.  In a similar way, even with a sinful heritage and nature, God calls us his children and makes us his top priority, working and waiting for his children to join him in heaven.  He takes “the oath” at baptism that we are his children and he will do everything for our good.

It’s as if we were that newborn baby in the birthing room, trying to make sense of the world around us.  We know that voice of our father just as an infant knows the voices of his earthly parents that he’s heard for months in the womb.  He speaks to us in our spiritual infancy and, though we don’t always understand the words, we know he loves us.  In fact, just as a family “oohs’ and “ahhs” over a newborn, our father lavishes his love on us, seeing us as perfect in his eyes in spite of any physical imperfections that come up under examination.

The arms that hold us are gentle, but strong enough to protect against all danger.  No one can snatch us out of his hands.

Though we may suddenly be seized with hunger and wail for help, our father already knew what was coming before we “asked” for it and so begins a lifelong process of our father anticipating and supplying what we need, giving us what’s best while we just cry out for the first thing that comes to mind. (Yes, our heavenly father also employs angelic and earthly means to get things done, much as an earthly father relies on a mother at times like this)

Like that newborn, we don’t realize that our heavenly father knew us before birth and planned out for us the good works and life he had in mind for us.  Our father will continue to guide us as we grow, discipline us as needed; reveal his heart of love when we have doubts, answer our questions when we ask.  He wants us to grow up to be like him.  He will bear with us in all things, even when we treat him with indifference or rebellion instead of responding to his love.  We may never truly comprehend it, but nothing can separate us from his love in Christ.

Perhaps as adults we lose that view of “a giant of a father” holding us in his arms and promising to care for us always.  Perhaps we’ve gotten so used to taking care of ourselves we think of God as the father who’s got his life of retirement and we check in with him every once in a while. But isn’t it good to stop and remember that “heavenly father” is more than just symbolism, more than a phrase?  So Happy Father’s Day Lord, from your child, and the children you have given me to care for, until we all meet in our heavenly home.