God the Father

Today is the anniversary of the birth of my father, John Basil Alexander. Had he lived he would have been 99 years old. Sadly, he died in September 1958 at the age of 51. In a way I still miss him. Perhaps what makes it worse is that my mother died in 1972 also at the age of 51 years. I miss her too.

Those of you who still have one or both parents alive where you are around my age of 62 will not realise what is like not to have your parents around. I was 14 when my father died and 28 when mum died. There is a sense in which I feel cheated out of an ongoing relationship in both cases. Thankfully, mum was around when I was married to the daughter of her best friend in 1966. Even then I missed my best friend being present. By then my grandfather was dead. I had grown up with him at my side every Saturday of every week.

Most people will grow up loving to share with their father the achievements they have accomplished in life. It might be examination results, getting married, being a parent for the first time, buying your first car and taking them for a ride etc etc. We love to have people with whom we can share our joys. Obviously it goes without saying that we turn to them for support when we are passing through sad times. Fathers are always there for you.

It strikes me that we can have the same sort of relationship with God. I have always felt that the idea of God the father began because Jesus referred to God as his father. I think he used the term so that people would see the right sort of picture of God. Up to the time of Jesus they had concentrated on living precisely according to the law which God gave to Moses. With the coming of Jesus people saw a brand new perspective through the fatherhood of God. This new picture of God as a father was good. It helped the disciples and everyone else to understand God in closer terms than they had done to that point. It established for them a relationship which they could use to understand the God they worshipped.

Suddenly they could see that if God was a father to them it was a close relationship on which they could build. They could understand it because they too were fathers and mothers or had parents. So it was that they learned how to pray. Their first prayer began, "Our father....." So it was that Jesus could teach them about what God was like. He related their own relationship with a son or daughter to this closeness they were to nurture under God the father.

This means that we are loved very much because we can be assured that God loves us like a father loves his child. And to be wrapped up in such a close loving relationship we count ourselves very lucky indeed. I remember a story of how indian braves became qualified as such. One test was to go into the forest and spend the night there alone. One young lad walked into the forest clearing with his father and then he was left alone. As the darkness encircled him he knew he had to sit it out and prove his bravery and manhood. All the night sounds were around him and it was very scary. But eventually dawn came and as he looked around he noticed his father just a few yards away. He had been sitting there all night.

This is how we are with God, today. We may not be able to see him but he is there all the time keeping watch over us. Whatever we are doing and wherever we are we can be sure that God goes with us. This gives us a warm and comfortable feeling. It tells us we need never be afraid, for we never leave God's presence. Sitting so close to us, he knows our every need. Like every good father, he wants us to talk to him and share with him what we have been doing. Our deeds, of course, have to bear scrutiny, so we need to follow the code of Christianity.

As we live our daily lives he is there to share the good times and the bad. He will cry with us when we are sad and will laugh with us when we are happy. I think that makes us very lucky indeed!