This is not about my late father, or his father, or my mother’s father, or me as a father.
Yet, it is about all of those and more.
There is a prompting here…no…it’s more than that…a drawing, a pulling, a gravitational grip upon me that tells me…explore this..explore the concept..
Sometimes I have closed my communication with my children with the signature….Dad, Pa, Pops, Papa…all terms of a designation of fatherhood or grandfatherhood…the various names and pet names of my daughters and grandchildren. What an honor to be called by the very name that Jesus called God…the address that Christ taught the disciples to call him…Father.
I am haunted however by my own failures as a father, the realization of the failures of the fathers in my own line, and even shocked by a look at the concept of fathering in the Scriptures…repeated tales of failure, favoritism, and worse..
I have spent an hour a week for the past two years leading a Bible discussion at a boot camp for juvenile offenders and have just started to explore work with men in a recovery ministry. There is one commonality that is almost universal to these individuals whose lives have run into the law, the system or the proverbial wall of defeat.. It has something to do with fathers.
This is not going to be a sociological or psychological treatise, but an exploration of spirituality, the spirituality of fathering, of the Father, and of being sons and daughters. I humbly confess that I do not know what, if any value, to others this may have. I only know that a mighty hand has gripped me and that I MUST go on this journey.
God has dropped this calling upon me..to look into Fathering, to look into him, our heavenly father, and to go with others on this exploration, this journey, this path toward the Holy Abba.
Father, may this be so much more than just a collection of experiences and personal opinions. Grant that you may use my writing for your purposes, for your will, for your kingdom.
Blessings.
