Our Father

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers and welcome. Our past week included another visit to Joy’s mom in Iowa and a special time with very special friends, it also included Father’s Day. Now, while it is certainly an honor and privilege for me to be a dad and grandpa on that special day, from the very start of last Sunday, the day unfolded for me more like, “child of the Father Day.” It began with my Bible reading that morning which included Psalms 139…

O LORD, you have examined my heart

and know everything about me.

You know when I sit down or stand up.

You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.

You see me when I travel

and when I rest at home.

You know everything I do.

You know what I am going to say

even before I say it, LORD.

You go before me and follow me.

You place your hand of blessing on my head.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too great for me to understand!

I can never escape from your Spirit!

I can never get away from your presence!

If I go up to heaven, you are there;

if I go down to the grave, you are there.

If I ride the wings of the morning,

if I dwell by the farthest oceans,

even there your hand will guide me,

and your strength will support me.

I could ask the darkness to hide me

and the light around me to become night—

but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.

To you the night shines as bright as day.

Darkness and light are the same to you.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

You saw me before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out

before a single day had passed.

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.

They cannot be numbered!

I can’t even count them;

they outnumber the grains of sand!

And when I wake up,

you are still with me…

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends you,

and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Now I know these verses may mean something quite different to you, but for me, it felt like a unique affirmation of God saying, “On this Father’s Day I am your Father and I know you intimately,” which is especially meaningful and comforting to me since my own dear father, who I miss terribly, has been gone for over 15 years. It also reminded me of a quote from Brennan Manning, which I then read, that captures the felt tenderness of God I was experiencing when he writes...

One of my favorite stories is about a priest from Detroit named Edward Farrell who went on his two-week summer vacation to Ireland to celebrate his favorite uncle’s eightieth birthday. On the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. Just as the sun rose, his uncle turned and stared straight at the rising orb. Ed stood beside him for twenty minutes with not a single word exchanged. Then the elderly uncle began to skip along the shoreline, a radiant smile on his face. After catching up with him, Ed commented, “Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell me why?” “Yes, lad,” the old man said, tears washing down his face. “You see, the Father is very fond of me. Ah, me Father is so very fond of me.”

It is humbling and sobering and yet reason to celebrate and jump for joy to know and understand that, “your Father is very fond of you.” Dallas Willard puts it another way when he writes, “To keep a right heart we must remember that the face of God shining upon us in gracious approval is the basis of our value.”

Do you believe that? That your Father is very fond of you and the face of God is shining on you in gracious approval? While I understand it may be a struggle if one’s life is in a difficult place or if it has felt like God has let you down in the past, but both Joy and I can attest to the fact that this has been one of the miraculous touch points of God which brought us through the accident and Joy’s recovery so far. While the accident was an unthinkable tragedy in many ways, both of us agree that throughout this journey, we have felt a quiet confidence and affirmation of our Father’s fondness toward us even in the fiercest of times.

This took me on a slight tangent, but hopefully you can see the connection, when I thought of C.S. Lewis' “The Chronicles of Narnia," in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” where Susan asks Mrs Beaver if Aslan (the figure of Christ in the books) is safe and Mr Beaver responds, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good!”

Certainly our journey over the last two plus years, especially in the first few weeks and months, did not feel safe, but nonetheless we did feel the goodness and mercy of God’s very real love, fondness, and gracious approval in many tangible ways. So let me return to Brennan Manning, this time from his book, “The Furious Longing of God.” As he so often does, here Manning helps put perspective on our experience with this intimate and fiercely loving Father God of ours when he writes...

Contemplation of the furious longing of God is elevated to a dramatic level in those rare and unforgettable moments when our faith, hope, and love are raised to an unprecedented level by the Holy Spirit’s active intervention, much like being in a boat as a storm hits. We are plunged into mystery, or what Heschel called radical amazement.

Self-consciousness and self-awareness disappear. We are in the presence of the ineffable Mystery above all creatures and beyond all telling. These are moments of truth. You are alone with The Alone. God’s tender feelings for you are no longer dry knowledge. You experience a certainty of God’s longing for intimacy unlike anything you’ve felt in hand-clapping worship or anointed Scripture studies…

God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, His love flashes into my soul, and I am overtaken by mystery. These are moments of kairos—the decisive inbreak of God’s fury into my personal life’s story. It is then I face a momentous decision… I have two choices. I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life. Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.