Greetings!
We made it to June! The month of last days of school (for some), graduation celebrations, the beginning of summer vacation travels, mission trips are happening, and Father’s Day is celebrated.
In my family, Father’s Day became a day when we all tried to celebrate with my dad, but after he retired, June started parade season (he drove a little car with the Shriners), and most Father’s day he was off some place participating in a parade. It really made him happy that his children and grandchildren understood that he found great joy in those parades. So we didn’t plan a Father’s Day gathering, we generally spent time with him during the weekend when he was home, helping in his garden, purchasing a round of golf that he generally used during the week, or watching the Tigers with him. My dad’s best day was any day that his children and grandchildren would spend with him, even if he had to drive a distance to attend an event one of us might be involved in. The one time we didn’t bother him was Sunday evening, after my sister moved to Oregon she would call dad at 6:00 every Sunday.
I know that not everyone has had a relationship with their dad, like we did, and that saddens me. One of my favorite authors, Roberta Bondi was one of those people. Her dad treated her as if she was a nuisance. He ignored her and never really showed her any sign that he loved her. It truly inhibited her relationship with God. She found it extremely difficult to pray the Lord’s Prayer and say “Our Father”. It was when she began to study history and she focused on the Desert Fathers of the faith that she found that her father was human and imperfect, and God was perfect. That’s when God worked a great thing in her spirit and she found that God was the perfect Father, and that no other father could be equal. Her father had died, but she found that she could forgive him, she understood him better. She also found that the relationship she had with her Heavenly Father had grown deeper and wider.
Whatever our relationship is/was with our human fathers, have we learned that our Heavenly Father is perfect, especially when our earthly father is not? Have we learned that the love God has for us far exceeds the love that anyone including our human father. 1 John tells us, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1). Jesus says that, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s live for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” (John 15:13-16).
Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that he sent his son into the world, for our sins to be forgiven. Not only that, but we are “chosen”. Chosen to be friends of Jesus and because we are friends, Jesus lays down his life for us…all because God’s love for us is so great that he wants not only to spend this life with us, but all of eternity with us! All we have to do is accept the gift of love given to us. I know that my human dad would have laid down his life for his children if he had to. Thankfully he did not. I have never doubted his love for any of his children or grandchildren. I also know that he was pleased that my relationship with my Heavenly Father who can give me so much more than he could was formed and continuing to be formed.
May you feel the great love of your Heavenly Father with you each and every day. And may you answer the call to be His love to a world that needs to know it has been chosen by Jesus as well and know that God’s best day is when we chose to spend time with him.
Shalom,
Pastor Mona