All across the country, children are celebrating fathers on Fathers Day. Fathers are receiving gifts, phone calls, text messages, emails, and being honored with meals out at restaurants. My children have remembered me with car washing liquids and materials. They have called and will call to strengthen the ties that bind us.
One of the best gifts I have received was from my ten-year-old granddaughter Madison a couple of weeks before Fathers Day. I sat down with her on the floor of Fleda’s mother’s house in Easley, SC to play a card game. She looked at me and said, “I love you, Papa.”
In his book of daily meditations, Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen wrote, “The Spirit reveals to us not only that God is "Abba, Father" but also that we belong to God as his beloved children. The Spirit thus restores in us the relationship from which all other relationships derive their meaning.
“Abba is a very intimate word. The best translation for it is: ‘Daddy.’ (I want to add ‘Papa’ as a good translation of Abba.) The word Abba expresses trust, safety, confidence, belonging, and most of all intimacy. It does not have the connotation of authority, power, and control that the word Father often evokes. On the contrary, Abba implies an embracing and nurturing love. This love includes and infinitely transcends all the love that comes to us from our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses, and lovers. It is the gift of the Spirit.”
We thank God today for fathers. We thank God for sending Jesus to give us our best look at God. Thanks to Jesus, we know who God is, and we know who we are: Father and children. (Read The Message translation of Romans 8:15-17.)
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