The Father

Praying through the Lord’s Prayer is sweet, I’m not talking about just reciting it from memory, but taking time to look into what the prayer means.  Some friends and I have been doing that this week, and as many of you know, the prayer starts out with “Our Father in Heaven”.  I was thinking about what that means, to be ‘our Father’, and then I thought about my own father.  He was not perfect, but, he certainly was awesome.  I remember one time my mom, dad and I went to watch one of my sister’s basketball games.  On the way home we listened to the news on the radio.  We heard a story about a man who sexually abused a child.  After hearing this my dad angrily said, “If anyone ever touched one of my kids like that I would kill them.”  My mom didn’t take him seriously and said, “Oh Bob!” and looked at him in disbelief, but he persisted in his claim.  [I can only think of one or two other times when my dad really got angry...one other time may have involved a vacuum cleaner being thrown out the front door...but that’s a different story for a different time...haha.]   

That righteous anger my dad felt is just a tiny glimpse into how God the Father feels.  The Creator of the universe wants us to call Him Father.  That means we are his children through and through.  That means we are all in the same family we are all equal- no matter the level of our education or the color of our skin.  He calls us His own, His children.  He made us and we are His.  He defends us.  He provides for us.  It means that when someone really wrongs us God is more upset by it then you or I could ever be.  If you've been wronged, there is a day coming when God will punish those offenders.  We have to trust that He will come and make all the wrong things right and will unleash His wrath on our enemies.  Leave your wrath in God’s hands, He is righteous and just. 

John 1:12  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-