The Importance of Good Fathers

I remember having a discussion in a Bible study group a few years ago about another reason that it is important to be a good father.  The discussion revolved around some remarks made by individuals outside the church regarding their view of God as a father.  These men were having trouble with the imagery of God as our Heavenly Father that is prevalent throughout Scripture.  The problem they were having was that they had abusive, uncaring, and unloving fathers and therefore couldn’t understand why God would call himself our father if he loves and cares for us.  The very word “father” conjured up for them a very dark image and so they struggled to separate the qualities that they saw in their own fathers from the qualities that God tells us that he has as our Father.

While I understood the implications of our discussion I never quite grasped the weight of it.  I have been blessed be a father that loves his children deeply and sacrificially.  It was not a great leap for me to liken the character traits that I have always seen in my own father to the traits that our Heavenly Father has, knowing that the latter are untainted by a sinful human heart.  However, a phone call that I received recently helped me to understand the difficulty that some people may have.

 The phone call came from my boss.  There was nothing remarkable about the content of the conversation but I noticed something that I hadn’t before – there was no nervousness or general anxiety stirred in me when the phone rang.  There shouldn’t have been.  I am extremely fortunate to be able to work for the epitome of a great boss.  He is helpful and supportive and genuinely cares about me as a professional and as a person.  The odd thing is that for the first several months I worked for him, I would be anxious every time I would get and email from him or see his name on the caller ID.

This anxiety had nothing to do with him but rather was due to a boss that I had worked for previously.  This previous boss managed predominantly by fear so the mere anticipation of interacting with him increased the anxiety that I was likely already feeling.  When I first started interacting with my current boss I couldn’t separate the description of someone as “boss” from the idea of “boss” I had in my mind and so all the uneasy feelings I used to get were replicated.  It took a long time for me to be able to redefine the concept in my mind to include a person that didn’t stir up apprehension.

After the phone conversation, I was immediately reminded of the conversation about fathers and the parallel was clear.  If a concept like “boss” could be so convoluted in my mind, how much more could a concept with the weight of fatherhood be confused?   This further reiterated to me the importance of being a good father.  I always want the concept of “father” one that invokes positive thoughts in my children and for them to be able to easily understand why God would use fatherhood imagery when he explains how he relates to us.  What better way to display to my children how much God loves them than to exhibit those qualities myself?  There is no way that I can ever come close to loving them like God loves them.  My actions will always be tainted by the stain of sin.  No amount of effort and will power on my part would result in me providing an accurate image for my children of how God loves them.  But God, in continuous acts of grace that I will never be able to fully understand, enables me to love my children in a way that reflects God’s love.  I am eternally grateful for these acts of grace and pray that they continue.

Lessons from a GPS

I have recently found myself in a position where I have some seemingly major decisions to make.  They have the potential to steer my future in one direction or another.  I have been reminded of a time when I was in a similar situation, although previously accompanied by other less than desirable circumstances. 

A couple years ago, I had been going through a period of stress that was negatively affecting my relationship with my family and was manifesting itself in physical ailments.  Along with daily stress, I was also consumed by where things were headed.  There were a number of different directions that I saw my life (and that of my family) headed and each had multiple sub-paths.  I was overwhelmed by the number of decisions I thought like I had to make.  I wanted to make wise choices in keeping with God’s commands and desires but felt paralyzed, unable to make even one decision.

During this time, I had begun working on a project out of town that I had to travel to on a regular basis.  The first couple times I traveled there I got a GPS in my rental car.  Now in most areas of my life I am pretty laid back and easy going, sometimes to a fault, and anything but “Type A.”  However, when I am driving to a new location, I like to know exactly where I am going.  I don’t just want to know landmarks and a list of turns.  If possible I like to be able to look at a map and see exactly where I will be going on the map.  This way, if I get off course, I have a better chance of backtracking and correcting my error.  This is not at all how the GPS units that I was given worked.  They merely displayed an illustration of your vehicle in space and told you what the next turn would be.

That morning, while in the airport, I had read a devotional essay on Psalm 119:105 which says “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”  The author of the essay explained that the job of a lamp is not to light up the entire course to be walked but rather to shed just enough light to illuminate our feet and the next step.  God promises to make the next step visible and asks us to take that step before he lights up the next one.  He never intends to show us several steps down the road as he is in control and guides our path and will get us to our destination.  I had spent that morning and afternoon letting this idea marinate in my mind as I made my trip out of town.

As I fiddled with the GPS, I became very frustrated as it would not give me any indication of the big picture of where I was going.  In my minimal experience with GPS units beforehand, I knew that it would lead me to my destination eventually as long as I strictly followed its instructions.  Sometimes the routes were unorthodox but they would always lead to the desired destination.  I wanted to know the big picture and have the freedom to veer off course if needed for stops in between but I couldn’t plan for any stops since I didn’t know where I was really going.  The only information I could get was the approximate distance to the next turn.

It didn’t take long until I saw the parallel to what I had read that morning and what I was dealing with at home.  The only way I would reach my destination was to follow the instructions of the next turn.  It was irrelevant that I didn’t know where I was along the route or what the next four turns would be.  If I had faith that the GPS was leading me in the right direction, all that mattered was that I took the only step that had been illuminated – the next one.

I realized that I had unrelenting faith that God knows the big picture and that he knows where he is leading me.  Even if I knew what the next several steps would be, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of them without the proper context.  All that mattered was that I took the next step, the only one that God had illuminated.  It completely changed my outlook on my circumstances.  I didn’t have to make several decisions at once and decide how I would react to the subsequent dominoes that would fall.  I just had to take the next step.  One step in faith, knowing that God is good and loving God.

I am reminded of this analogy now.  God knows where my education, my career, and my life are heading.  He has plans that are far larger than I am.  All I have to do is take one step.