THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD!

Today is my father’s birthday! Birthdays and Father’s Day are a time when sons and daughters will remember their Fathers and celebrate their lives, whether living or dead. They will recall favorite memories of times spent with their Fathers throughout their childhoods and adult lives. For some, these will be happy memories. For others, not so happy, due to the loss of their father or of issues they had in their relationship growing up. I don't have either good or bad memories concerning my biologic father because I never knew him in life. He was out of my life a year or so after my birth. Tragically, he never made contact with me or my family ever again! I received bits and pieces about him from my mother over the years. Some positive and some negative; but always with a tone of hurt in her voice. To her mind he was the bad guy dressed in black, in all the cowboy movies of the day. To my mind, he was the hero galloping in on a white horse, guns blazing, dressed in white. The stories about him and their failed relationship only fuelled my desire to know him all the more. As it turned out, I would spend most of my young adult life searching to find him.

As a child growing up, I had lots of questions and fantasies about my father, with what little information I could get out of my mother about him. He was a subject we whispered about and kept it between her and I. My mother had gone into the military after I was born and left me to be raised by my grandmother. While in the military, she met and married another soldier. Upon their discharge from the service, I came to live with them when I was 5 years old. Her husband was a cruel man and an abusive step-father to me and her. I have too many hurtful memories of his abuse and mistreatment of us both.

After receiving one of his beatings, I would lay on my bed crying. I would call out my father’s name and pray that my real father would come and kill him for mistreating me and take me away to live with him. At school, I would lie to the other kids about my real father. I did not want them to know the daily horror I was living with my step father. They knew something was not right, because my step father never came to any of my activities at school. I would make up fantastic tales of my real father being away in the military doing heroic things. To counter their bragging about their fathers and their relationship and activities with them; I would lie and claim the same things, only with my uncles. How I envied those kids who had fathers at home! I envied them so much!

After years of personal inquiry, running down leads, telephoning people and numerous private investigators, I finally located him when I was 39 years of age. Instead of the news sparking a joyous celebration, it was a very sad disappointment for me. I found out my father had passed away 6 years previously. Strangely, that news buckled my knees, as the voice on the other end of the phone informed me. It was as if he had just died. It was like a blow to my face! It hit me the same as if I had known him and had a relationship with him. I felt devastated! All of my hopes for reunion with him just exploded into vapor. My dreams of touching him, talking with him and laughing with him; vanished into thin air, just like that! I could not believe that I would never know his voice or feel his arms embrace me as a father and son. The truth of my father’s passing without me ever knowing him was so difficult to bear, even at my adult age. It was a great disappointment for me, because for so many years, I could only envision him alive. I had to see and know for myself that this was true. I guess I was still holding onto hope that maybe this was the wrong man, buried there!

All of my scenarios of our first meeting were running through my mind as I walked to his grave site, carrying a bouquet of flowers. It was a fresh, open wound for me, as I sat at his grave. A flood of emotions engulfed me and I cried mournfully for him. The locked up frustrations from my early childhood to this day, were finally released and poured from my eyes in tears that saturated his grave. Primal moans came from deep within me. For the first time in my life, I truly felt loss! This was up front and personal! I was feeling the loss of a parent, I would never know! I spoke to him there! I asked him all the questions I had wanted answers to for so long, between my sobs. I told him of my great admiration and love for him! I told him that I understood him and his actions of years gone by and that I forgave him for not being in my life. I left it all there at his grave with the flowers I had brought.

I found comfort in prayer! I prayed to our heavenly father and asked Him to bless my real father there with Him. I took comfort in the knowledge that God was with me through it all and that He would never leave me. I believe that when I get to heaven one day, I will see my biologic father there also and we will have the relationship we were denied in this life. I was further comforted by finding out that I had three siblings from my father. A son and two daughters. I was overjoyed to meet them and to see a photo of my real father for the first time in my life. It was such a relief to finally put a face on the man I had only dreamed about and not known. I knew I was his son, because he, I and siblings all favored one another. And then there was this inward feeling of knowing, when I hugged my sisters for the first time. We hugged and kissed and cried together for a long time at the train station, upon my arrival to visit with them. At last, I have some part of my biological father that I can touch! I felt complete and excepted! I had found my missing family. I did not want to let them go!

When I think back on this experience and of the relationship I would like to have had with my father; I cannot help but think of the original pattern for this relationship dynamic. Jesus told us what that pattern was in the first two words of The Lord's Prayer, “Our Father!" These two simple words, state so clearly what God's relationship to us is. It is that of Parent and Child! He is our father and we are his created children. It is in God, our Father, that we live and have our being. As children, our fondest desire is to be like our fathers. As believers in Christ, this is the same commandment Jesus gives to us in Matt. 5:48 “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” In other words, strive to take on the spiritual qualities of the Father. Try to be like the Father in love and goodness! Love one another, unconditionally and be kind to one another!

Then there is one of the original ten commandments that says “Honor thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee!” Deut. 5:16 -If we honor our earthly parents because they gave us life and raised us up; how much more should we honor our Heavenly Father, who is our source for EVERYTHING?? He is the perfect Father! Omnipotent, He commands power over all His creation. There is none like Him. We are His creation. Omnipresent, He indwells the hearts of His created beings. He is ever present in our lives and wherever we are, He Is! Omniscient, He is all knowing and knows everything about us. He shares our trials, tribulations, sorrows and joys. He is our comfort and joy! His goodness, mercy and grace are never ending blessing upon us.

As we remember our earthly Fathers and reflect upon our relationship with them, do not forget the Father of Fathers! Today and every day, remember God, our Heavenly Father and all that He has brought us through. Jesus Christ the God-Man, our Lord and Savior, had unbroken communication with His Father, through prayer. He acknowledges God the Father, in all things. Jesus was God Centered! Studying God’s Word, gives us insights into the nature of God and His creation because it moves us to contemplate these things. As we reflect deeply on Truth, we begin to understand that all we really need to know is, “In the beginning God.” This is the same message that Moses gave, “Thou shall have no other Gods before me.” It is the same messages as Jesus gave when he said “Our Father, which is in heaven”. We have everything we need in The Fatherhood of God!

When all of creation is recognized as being God centered, then all will be “right” with the world. We can know this concept in mind but to know this fully we must live accordingly – in thought, word and deed. The ability to be God centered is given only as we give Him first place in our lives – in prayer, in meditation and in all our ways, acknowledge Him. Just let Him be God! He is worthy of our praise and honor! Father for the Truth that Jesus brought to us, that you are “Our Father”, we thank you! May everything that has breath praise thy Holy Name! Amen.

Your brother, In His Service

Min. Douglas Daniels