hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
When I was growing up, I did not have the best understanding of what a father was. My own Dad ( Pop ) had moved out of our house when I was 5 years old and the only real recollection of him for me was hiding behind a chair as he and my Mom had a terrible fight. As the youngest, I do not recall any of the specifics but some of my older brothers sadly have a much more vivid memory of the details that they have shared. As the years passed my personal experience with my Pop grew to the point that we became quite good friends, phoning each other every day for years before he passed. I am blessed that my experience of 'Father' was an evolutionary one from my own Pop and from that of Church which played a major influence on my life.
I mention this because we all have different emotions and experiences when we think of the word Father. Some people have magnificent memories akin to Father Knows Best and throwing baseballs together in the yard while others feel that they had the father from hell. Still others do not have that balance that I had because even their notion of Father as ( a good ) Priest was tainted by sexual abuse at the hands of someone that should have been trusted. Instead, they became victims. We run the gamut of our experiences and some of my own brothers never were able to have anything beyond a resentful relationship with our own father, even to his death.
There is yet the most important example of in my mind of Father, and that is the image of God our Father and creator of all that is. I suppose all our personal experiences should reflect that kind of magnificent role model but as I said, not always so. Jesus called God "Abba". That is an interesting word, one which we probably know as just another foreign word for father. Not so simple. Abba is more akin to the word we would know as daddy. Daddy does not conjure up images of a young chap smartly dressed on an English estate who might call his progenitor "Father" in a formal Downton Abbey way. No, Abba is such an intimate, affectionate term. We see at once a real hint of how difficult translating Scripture is and capturing the essence of words from a previous time and place in history.
Daddy. Jesus had a wonderful relationship with the Father. The love so intense it is said that the expression of that love is yet a third being, the Spirit. Now that is a father! Daddy, Creator, friend, wow! If we all had that kind of father, how wonderful our experiences and lives would be.
And yet, we do have that father, that same heavenly Father. God loves each and every one of us and in the best way possible. Even our best experiences and images of our own earthly father cannot hold a match to the brilliant shining exuberant love of our Creator God, Father.
From all of my knowledge and experiences of Father I bring today's thoughts and meditations of what our heavenly Father brings to my life, to our lives. Creator of all that is. Lover of us, he willed each of us into existence by a mere thought that what the world needed is me, you. Then and only then did the biology came into play. The miraculous love of His designs shining forth even more. Today I will focus on Abba in thankfulness and also in how I can emulate His love in our world.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
When I was growing up, I did not have the best understanding of what a father was. My own Dad ( Pop ) had moved out of our house when I was 5 years old and the only real recollection of him for me was hiding behind a chair as he and my Mom had a terrible fight. As the youngest, I do not recall any of the specifics but some of my older brothers sadly have a much more vivid memory of the details that they have shared. As the years passed my personal experience with my Pop grew to the point that we became quite good friends, phoning each other every day for years before he passed. I am blessed that my experience of 'Father' was an evolutionary one from my own Pop and from that of Church which played a major influence on my life.
I mention this because we all have different emotions and experiences when we think of the word Father. Some people have magnificent memories akin to Father Knows Best and throwing baseballs together in the yard while others feel that they had the father from hell. Still others do not have that balance that I had because even their notion of Father as ( a good ) Priest was tainted by sexual abuse at the hands of someone that should have been trusted. Instead, they became victims. We run the gamut of our experiences and some of my own brothers never were able to have anything beyond a resentful relationship with our own father, even to his death.
There is yet the most important example of in my mind of Father, and that is the image of God our Father and creator of all that is. I suppose all our personal experiences should reflect that kind of magnificent role model but as I said, not always so. Jesus called God "Abba". That is an interesting word, one which we probably know as just another foreign word for father. Not so simple. Abba is more akin to the word we would know as daddy. Daddy does not conjure up images of a young chap smartly dressed on an English estate who might call his progenitor "Father" in a formal Downton Abbey way. No, Abba is such an intimate, affectionate term. We see at once a real hint of how difficult translating Scripture is and capturing the essence of words from a previous time and place in history.
Daddy. Jesus had a wonderful relationship with the Father. The love so intense it is said that the expression of that love is yet a third being, the Spirit. Now that is a father! Daddy, Creator, friend, wow! If we all had that kind of father, how wonderful our experiences and lives would be.
And yet, we do have that father, that same heavenly Father. God loves each and every one of us and in the best way possible. Even our best experiences and images of our own earthly father cannot hold a match to the brilliant shining exuberant love of our Creator God, Father.
From all of my knowledge and experiences of Father I bring today's thoughts and meditations of what our heavenly Father brings to my life, to our lives. Creator of all that is. Lover of us, he willed each of us into existence by a mere thought that what the world needed is me, you. Then and only then did the biology came into play. The miraculous love of His designs shining forth even more. Today I will focus on Abba in thankfulness and also in how I can emulate His love in our world.
fa·ther
noun
- 1.a man in relation to his natural child or children.
synonyms: dad; More - 2.(often as a title or form of address) a priest."pray for me, Father"
synonyms: priest, pastor, parson, clergyman, cleric, minister, preacher; More
verb
- 1.be the father of."he fathered three children"
synonyms: parent, be the father of, bring into the world, spawn, sire, breed;
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