Good, Good Father
8Yet You, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand. (Isaiah 64:8)
Yesterday we celebrated Father’s Day. I was lucky to have the entire day off and spent nearly all of it with my wonderful family. We attended church, where I was blessed with receiving our new group of three-year-olds as yesterday was “promotion Sunday”, where every age group moved up to their next class. The two-year-olds moved into the “Trikes”, the three-year-olds became “Wagons”, and our four-year-olds moved into the Elementary Education programming. Our youngest child (SGZ3) was among the group of nervous “Trikes” who came to Large-group worship for the first time. She barely acknowledged me through the service, but I am sure that will change over time as she warms up to the new format. From church we went to lunch as a family and then caught the early showing for the live-action How To Train Your Dragon at the “World’s Tallest IMAX” theater in Pooler, GA. I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Florida the last two years for Father’s Day to spend the weekend with my incredible Father, but this year I had a three-day drill with the Georgia National Guard, so we were forced to stay local. I picked the movie because we had done the same three years ago when the new IMAX had recently opened and the kids really enjoyed it. The new HTTYD is phenomenal. At first, I was pessimistic about Dreamworks remaking the original, which is still a classic computer animation movie and storyline. The live-action did not disappoint, and had all the magic, if not more, that the original had. The actors did an incredible job and the special effects were breathtaking, especially in the IMAX format. I had forgotten the storyline between Hiccup and his father, Stoick the Vast, and what a perfect father day movie it was. Watching HTTYD inspired some “At The Movie” type vibes that I will try to share later on through this summer because I find a lot of joy taking popular culture movies and giving them a biblical spin. But that’s for another post on another day.
Back to Father’s Day. I finished the night with my second gathering of our new, neighborhood, Men’s Bible Study. Even though all the men who attended the first meeting agreed to hold the second session on Father’s Day, most had the celebration of the day prevent them from being able to attend. But for the three of us in attendance, we had another amazing discussion looking at Lesson Two from Max Lucado’s “Life Lessons” from the Book of Revelation. Lesson Two looked at what Jesus said to the Church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7, when Jesus tells the church that they have lost “their first love”. Most of Lucado’s questions were about how we remember feeling and acting with our first love and how that relates to our relationship with Jesus. When I initially answered the study guide questions, I was relating the questions to my “first love” romantic relationships I experienced in life. Then Lucado prompts readers with a question of our first love with Jesus and I shared with the group that I did not really begin to feel the love I have for God and Jesus until the birth of my first child, when I held SGZ1 for the first time and felt a love unlike any I had ever experienced before. It was through the love I had for my oldest daughter that I realized how God loved us, and as I was explaining that to the group, it dawned on me that I had answered the questions of my first love through the wrong lens. The first love I ever experienced that I could relate to my love for Jesus was the love I felt for my children. That unconditional love, that love where I would do anything to keep them safe and pour into them to ensure they have happy and thriving lives, and most importantly, that they have the same life-changing relationship with Jesus and God that I have. That is the love I have experienced that has further strengthened my love for God and Jesus.
God is a good, good Father, and He loves each of His children, all of them, regardless of their race, religion, sexual identity, political party. But like any loving, good Father, God wants His children to love one another as He loves them. He wants us to see each other as He sees us. He wants us to take care of each other as He looks after us, especially those He seeks to lift up the most: the poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan. While Father’s Day was yesterday, we can celebrate our Good, Good Father everyday, by insuring we live our lives that would make our Heavenly Father proud, that we love as He loves us, and that we do the good works He yearns for us to do.
I had planned to write more, but SGZ3 has discovered me on the computer and now she wants all of my attention, and like a good Father, I want to be there for her (she is currently climbing on me right now). I will close with sharing Brandon Lake‘s phenomenal full album, “King Of Hearts“, which dropped on Friday. While every song on that set is incredible, the one I will share today is the most fitting for this post, so click on the image below and hear how we all have our “Daddy’s DNA”.
Common Sense Reborn 