Son? Daughter? Me?
Maybe you’ve read this verse before – John 1:10-13. Maybe not. Regardless, it’s quite a big deal and I’m publicly admitting I’ve glossed over it a few times hoping it would just go away so I wouldn’t have to be moved by it.
You may have had the perfect dad growing up. Mine was often… “busy”. My older siblings had a different relationship with him. But by the time marriage #2 and child #6 came around, he was spread a bit too thin to give me the time and attention a kid like me was craving. So, reading about being a son gave me a bit of the same fear you get after you fall off a bike and get gravel in your knee and the doctor says “okay, time to go inside and clean this thing up…”
This might sting. And, you might have to deal with some past hurt in order to heal fully and walk right again.
Eventually, I did. I had some great opportunities over the past decade and a half to engage with my dad about what was “missing” from my childhood and experiencing his death a year and a half ag. My perspective has markedly shifted. Gone are many of the illusions I’ve had that God, as perfect Heavenly Father, was just a bigger version of an imperfect earthly father. Today, I understand “sonship” more clearly.
Last week, I was reading Proverbs 2. Couldn’t get past the first two words: “My son…”
How do you do when you read that? Today, I read it in light of the fact that every morning, I deserve to have a bottomless bucket of God’s wrath poured out on me all day long. Yet, He poured it out on Jesus instead. Do you consider the fact that despite all of your failures, foibles, and shortcomings, God – perfect, holy, righteous Elohim reaches out to you both in the Spirit and in the word to leave you notes of encouragement, wisdom, protection, even love? Have you considered that the Lord of everything that is, was, and is yet to come has taken the necessary steps to reveal himself to mankind, inspire errant men to write down His inerrant truth, and preserve and protect it to this day so that you and I can read the whole story (so far) of His pursuit of a traitor race that He loves and bids us call Him “Abba [Daddy], Father” (Romans 8:15)?
Maybe you had a great, “available”, fully present Dad who offered you encouragement and love at every step – that’s great! You’ve been truly blessed. But, like all men, your Dad was still flawed – imagine what it will be like when we see Jesus face to face and He presents us to our perfect Heavenly Father!
I pray today that we all begin to pick up Proverbs differently. In fact, that we pick up the bible differently, and own the fact that God calls us sons and daughters of the Most High even though without Christ we are nothing more than “objects of wrath” (Romans 9:22, Ephesians 2:3).
Read on, sons and daughters. Let us walk on, as children of light.
in Christ,
AP