Being a father can be hard work. But it is also incomparable joy. See the picture above. Yes that’s me and our kids at Myrtle Beach in 1986, having a blast. I sure do miss those days. When your children are all grown up it is of course different. Christy now, pictured above, has already gone to be with the Lord. David has had a rough spring with a bulging disk in his back. And our Russian gal Yuliya has been working her brains out trying to get going on her dissertation at the University of Chicago on Heidegger’s aesthetics whilst teaching….. and now she’s going to Paris until January to work on that dissertation at the Sorbonne. As the Swedes say…. we are too soon old, and too late smart.
Today on Father’s day I think of my children of course, and how good they have been to me, such a blessing. But I also think of my father and my heavenly Father. My earthly father was a sweet, tender-hearted, loving person who loved Carolina and his home state and the simply pleasures of life. He was a devout Christian and he and Mom raised me to be that way as well. Loyalties ran deep– Faith, family, and of course the good ole Tar Heels. I sang the Tar Heel fight song at his funeral….. from the pulpit, and James Howell, our Myers Park minister, a die hard Duke fan and alum let me. I have so many happy memories of both my father who lived well into his 90s, and my children, one of whom will not make that mark.
But I would be remiss in not noting that I have another Father, an eternal Father, an Abba, who has been there for me every single day, whether I realized it or not, whether I wanted it or not, whether I believed it or not, whether I responded to it or not. I have often wondered how hard it must be, to be God, to have all these wonderful creatures, and yet millions of them don’t even believe he exists! Millions of them misunderstand him badly. Millions of them blame him for everything that could ever possibly go wrong in their lives, or does go wrong. If you want to talk about a story of unrequited love, surely that is the story of God the Father.
When you lose a child suddenly, as Ann and I did last year, there is no human consolation that can ever compensate, no words that are ever adequate, no hugs that are ever sufficient. But I have learned one thing—- only God can truly comfort those who mourn. Why? Not just because he lost his only Son on the cross, though that is one reason. Nor just because he has temporally lost millions of his human children to various sorts of tragedies, some self-inflicted, many not. No, it is because God has even eternally lost some of his children who refused his love and chose a familiar hell for all eternity rather than the eternal warm embrace that seemed so alien to them, so foreign, so unacceptable, such an affront to their independence, to their pride, to their will. God, as the Scriptures actually suggest, is a man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief. And as such, God is in a unique position to comfort those who mourn.
And it is in part because of this that I better understand why Jesus once said to his human parents….’Did you not know I had to be about my Father’s business’? You see the fatherhood of God is the primary fatherhood in this universe, and any good human fatherhood must be patterned after and submitted to that. Jesus himself knew the ‘family first’ mantra, if by family one meant one’s human family was not a Biblical notion. Indeed, it stood in danger of becoming a form of idolatry, for the good can often be the biggest impediment to properly honoring and serving the best.
And what is best, is that God the Father must be first in all our lives, our hearts, indeed in all our priorities. Even Jesus had to honor and serve and be about the business of his heavenly Father first and foremost, and not primarily the agenda of his earthly mother and step-father. This is a hard truth, a hard lesson to learn, but we all must learn it.
Children often strive so hard to please their earthly parents, and this is not a bad thing in itself, unless of course it gets in the way of playing to an audience of One, the One, the heavenly Father. This is so because at the end of the day we must please God and help and serve and love one another. It is not primarily our role in life to please people and help out God. God can do it quite well without us.
It is a wise father who realizes his children actually belong to God and must serve God first and foremost. It is a wise father who releases his children back into God’s care when they have grown up, rather than clinging to them or forcing them to remain in their infancy and never grow up. And it is a wise father who himself does not cling to the past but goes on serving the heavenly father day after day, and remembering the future is as bright as the promises of God.
This is what I remind myself on Father’s Day, as I strive to be more like not only my earthly father, but my heavenly One. Like Jesus, I must be about my Father’s business.
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