The Father's Love

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is because it did not know him." 1 John 3:1.

I am unworthy to be called a father.  After all, the one who fulfills the term "father" was the one who creates each child and gives up His son that we might have life.  "Father", in its purest form is perfect love, and there is no man who is worthy of such a title (Matthew 23:9).  And yet God has chosen to call men like me to become fathers.  He has given the unworthy the greatest gift and responsibility: the care of another life.  Twelve days into parenthood, I have already failed many times as a father.  I've been given glimpses of how destructive my shortcomings can be in the life of a little child.  All of this is too fearful and wonderful for me, that God would trust me with a little one like my son.  And then I think of those fathers who will fail more than I do by not being present, by being abusive, or by being cold.  And it dawns on me that though God gives children unto imperfect and broken men, God never relinquishes His own fatherhood over those children.  Even when I fail to be a father, God does not.  And then it dawns on me, that even when I am an imperfect father unworthy to bear the same title that He has defined in perfect love, I am still a child of God.  When I cannot be a father in the holiest sense of the word, and there will be many times when I cannot, it suffices to allow Him to be father to both my child and to me.  For I have seen myself more childish in parenting than I ever remember being as a boy.  What great freedom there is in the truth that our childhood in God the Father does not depend on us.  Rather, it depends on his great love that has been lavished upon us.  This is not a matter of activity but identity.  How wonderful that the worst case scenario is that God alone will be father of all!  So when I feel that I have failed in my behavior to attain the image of a father, I must remember that I have been made with Christ a child of The Father.  And there in that place I have some hope of allowing the likeness of God's son to live through me.  Only when I become a child of God can I be a father to my child.  The moment I forget who I am as God's is the moment it becomes impossible for me to be Abba.   For I am unworthy to be called daddy.  But I am undoubtably a son of the most high God.

"Oh God, thank you for sending your son so that I too might be able to call you Father.  Thank you for sending me little ones in my life to remind me that I am always your child.  Jesus reached the fullness of his purpose by simply being your son.  Help me to do the same, even to the end that I might be a father in your image.  Amen"