A Father's Love

A meditation for June 2004

There is no stronger or more vital image of God than that of “Father.” That is how Jesus thought of God, and we are invited as his disciples to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Fatherhood is God’s gift to each child of God. We each have had a father, for better or for worse, and we are each called to be like a father (or a mother) to our own children and to children in the extended family.

We know men and women like that, those who assume a parental role in vital relationships. The influence of such a relationship often has been a saving grace, a gift of friendship or kinship that cannot be measured. When an individual has experienced that kind of mentoring love and is able to duplicate that gift for a next generation, the bond between generations is strengthened.

Perhaps you have been a teacher and a counselor of youth, you have demonstrated skills beyond the ordinary in” being like a father” to those who are becoming adults, those who are benefiting from your accumulated wisdom. Others have watched you as a father and as a father-figure within the circle of the family of faith, and see the secret of being a wise man. It is more than a wisdom of words. It is the capacity to give oneself in Christ-like love.

A Father’s Love

Look with me at parenting and I will show you fatherhood at its best.

If I speak in the family circle of a father’s wisdom or even of a heavenly father’s care, but omit any words of a father’s love, I will sound a false note and send a dissonant signal.

And if I personify a father who is both prophetic and profound, with great knowledge and deep parental understanding; and even if I am a mountain-moving man of faith, but those powers and that faith are not lived out with love, they will come to naught.

And if I, as a father, have money to burn and offer my support materially, but withhold my love, I will burn out spiritually and fail those who need my love.

Love in a father’s domain is patient with each beginner, and is kind in each judgment; it is not jealous of other father-figures nor is it given to bragging of one’s ancestry. Love is neither arrogant nor overbearing.

Love in a child’s world does not insist that there is only one way to do things; it does not get irritated with a child’s limitations nor is it resentful of a child’s achievements. Love does not take pleasure in failure, but looks for things that are praiseworthy. Love in every family bears burdens mutually; believes in the contribution each member makes; hopes for the maturity God intends; endures every threat to well-being and wholeness.

A father’s love always perseveres. As for predictions of success or failure, they will be silenced; as for pontifications, they shall cease; as for certainty about the future of the family, it will remain hidden. For such knowledge is always incomplete and each forecast is flawed; but when true family
ties bind us to each other in love, our experience of imperfection will fade away.

When I was a child, looking at my father, I spoke of him as my hero; I thought of him as all-wise; I reasoned that he would always be there; but when I grew up I outgrew my childish ways of speaking and thinking and reasoning.

For now I see a dim reflection of reality, but I am coming to new insights about having and being a father. Now I come face to face with a love that looks me in the eye and touches me in my heart. Now my partial grasp of our kinship gives way to knowing myself, even as I am fully known.

So faith in what we are given to be, hope in what is yet in store for us as God’s children, and love between the generations abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love like our Father’s love.

Make love eternal your goal

(Permission is given to reproduce, with source acknowledged.)
From Love’s Letters: A Poetic Book of Confessions by George Gunn
(Library Lane Press / Copyright 2001)