We’ve sailed past Father’s Day on our calendars. Some, like me, remembered fondly those blood lines that brought physical life. Others tried to forget, and still others celebrated men that have stood in an empty gap.
But there are things that Father’s Day reminded me of this year. I continue to linger those on thoughts and images. They stir a memory-cauldron of long ago scenes.
Trivial scenes surface like scattered tributes.
I can see the way my Dad walked through the fields, plucked a head of wheat and rubbed it between his fingers until the kernels lay naked in his hand. I picture how the sun silhouetted him as he tossed them into his mouth, and the way he tested ripeness with a slow calculating chew.
I remember Dad’s faded OshKosh B’gosh overalls stretched over his rounded belly, the farmer’s tan on his arms, and the tractor logo above the bill of his red cap.
I think of his exceptional musical talent which seeped from his pores and turned most anything into an instrument capable of familiar tunes. And I remember how his baritone voice filled heat mirages on the farmyard with pulsating waves of beautiful hymns.
This was my Dad.
I remember his deep voice at family devotions followed by a heartfelt prayer that his children would grow up “unspotted” by the world. Those prayers had a profound effect on me.
I’m not a Dad, and mine is long gone, but the species still runs through our family in the best ways. My husband, father of four, three son-in-laws who are daddies, a son who is a dad, and the grandson-daddies of our great-grandchildren. These fathers fill my heart with pride and love. These are the men who carry the mantel of fatherhood in our family.
It is a legacy of pure grace.
From my high up family-branch-perch, I can look over generations of family members. While we are all children of His creation, we each stand on the same level of need before our Heavenly Father. We must be born into Christ’s family by adoption and new birth.
Nicodemus, in the book of John, had a difficult time grasping what that meant. A Pharisee, an important member of the Sanhedrin religious ruling council, he had been born into the right Jewish blood line. He’d been taught by the best teachers. He memorized laws and prophesies about the Messiah.
But the teacher Jesus disturbed him, intrigued him, and moved him to consider if He could possibly be the One they had waited for. Perhaps because of fear or concern about his reputation, Nicodemus met Jesus under the cover of night.
And in that meeting, Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3 NKJV)
Jesus’ statement stripped away all of Nicodemus’ assumed sonship. It obliterated prestige, merit, religion, heritage, and his accumulated good deeds. Rather, Jesus declared a completely different kind of birth, not of flesh but of spirit.
It invited Nicodemus to a spiritual relationship with God as his Father.
Although Nicodemus had the right kind of resume, he was left, in a spiritual sense, orphaned. His list of merits didn’t earn him the sonship he desired.
We are like Nicodemus.
New birth, must have seemed a preposterous idea, perplexing, and even frightening. It left him without credentials, as bereft as an illegitimate pagan on the street.
Perhaps in defense, maybe with disbelief, or maybe with the hoarse whisper of naked need, Nicodemus asked: “‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’” (John 3:4 NKJV)
With the dark sky surrounding them, Jesus spoke the answer to Nicodemus’ dilemma as well as to ours.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16 NKJV)
No one needs to remain stuck in a place of abandon, Fatherless, or family-less. For since the beginning of time, our loving heavenly Father has longed for us to know Him, to be our Father.
I am proud and grateful for my flesh and blood fathers within my physical family. I’m thankful for the care, provision, and protection they provide. But it is in God’s Fatherhood my security rests and my purpose grows.
Those memories of my Dad that flow in and out now are part of the shifting shadows of time. They’ve reminded me again of the earthly role which prepared me to know Jesus, His unmerited love, and a belonging undeserved. It is a mantel birthed by pure grace.This passing-down-mantel of fatherhood is one of pure grace. Share on X
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