A Father’s Love
My wife Dorothy and I share an evening meal once a
week at our place with our daughters and their husbands. I was silently
watching my little two-year old grandson playing with his daddy. My tall
son-in-law was sitting on the carpet and his son had his undivided attention.
I thank the Lord that he gave me three daughters
all of whom I love dearly. However, I perceive that there is a special
relationship between a father and a son, just as my wife Dorothy has that
special ‘girly’ relationship with our three daughters. At the end of our
evening together the boy’s dad picks his son up in his strong arms and carries
him. It’s plain to see that he loves his son. In this I see a cameo of God’s
love for His children.
An Army Chaplain was lamenting that his grandson,
the apple of his eye, had grown up and had gone off the rails. I pray for my
little grandson daily that he’ll always know a close walk with the Lord.
However, I’m reminded that God’s people, from Adam till today, have been known
to wander from the well-lit paths of righteousness to play the fool in the
shadows. One only has to read the warnings in the Book of Proverbs about the
flattering seductress. However, ‘A wise son makes glad a father, but a foolish
son is the grief of his mother’ Proverbs 10:1. I pray my little grandson will
grow up wise!
God’s children in the wilderness years were easily
enticed away from their loving heavenly Father. Indeed, it’s during tough times
that our love for our Father is most tested. We look to God to protect
us, but when devastation and destruction comes we tend to question His love for
us. Wandering in the wilderness His children had been afraid to enter the
Promised Land. So Moses in a speech reminded them of how God had looked after
them, and, ‘In the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you,
as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this
place’ Deuteronomy 1:31.
How does a man carry his son? He wraps his arms
around him and holds him close to his heart. But look again at God: ‘The
eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are His everlasting arms’
Deuteronomy 33:27a. How did Job manage to trust God when his faith was so
sorely tested? God asked Job rhetorically, ‘Have you an arm like God?’ Job
40:9a.
I love that poem ‘Footprints in the Sand.’ ‘You
promised me Lord, that if I followed You, You would walk with me always. But I
have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been
one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed You most, have You not
been there for me? The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set
of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”’
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