ABBA FATHER

The father to child relational metaphor of God’s relationship to man is more than a metaphor. God, our Divine Daddy, loves us unconditionally, not because of what we are but whose we are, and He is, necessarily, much more than our earthly father. He is all knowing, all powerful and everywhere simultaneously, and His creation, of which we are a part, is moving and evolving according to the plan He purposed within Himself. With wisdom and power far above and beyond any earthly daddy, He is able to bring about our utmost for His highest, and He does just that! He has made us partakers of His Spirit... partakers of Christ... partakers of The Cross, that in this “Oneness” we might be transformed into the very nature of His Beloved Son. He punishes us when needed to guide and align our behavior according to His will. He lets us roam when we demand freedom from Him, and welcomes us back with open arms when we realize the cost of flying solo. He does not isolate us from the deceitfulness of riches or the glitter of the world’s pleasures, allowing us to overcome misplaced desires, learning in the process the cost of pursuing lover’s less wild then the eternal lover of our soul. He allows suffering and all the variegated hues of adversity... the pressures of this life: It is in adversity that Self walks the lonely road to Golgotha while patience endurance does its perfecting work, using that which purposes to overcome and destroy to unwittingly transform us, dying daily that the Christlife might emerge. His goal is our perfection... spiritual maturity... transformation into His very own character and nature, making us “perfect” for the abundantly eternal life He has prepared for us. He allows persecution, a measure of our Christlikeness, to further our transformation while condemning the evil that produces it, sharing in the suffering of our Lord and bearing in our body the marks of His Lordship. He knows what is best for us, and will never let our wants overpower His wisdom, giving us only good things... eternally good things, things that are truly good for us. He allows us to suffer the consequences of our actions, that in responsible reaping we may learn the power of our will to choose... that decisions have descendants, learning our need for His wisdom in all the decisions of this life, effectively drawing us into His Lordship. And in all of this He lavishly pours His love into our hearts... that we might in turn be loving, and teaches us to set our mind on things above... our Blessed Hope in Him. He allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent in His power, loving us too much to leave us the way we are. He holds our breath in His hands and owns all our ways, setting our feet in His stocks and watching each ordered footstep... lest we wander too far. He records our every thought and act in His book, collects our tears in His bottle, and sings over us lullabies of love. And, He never, ever leaves us forsaken – we are never, ever alone!

HE’S A GOOD, GOOD DADDY