It was the worst thing I could imagine.
I was 6 years old, sitting on the sofa. My mom had answered the phone in the kitchen and quickly handed it to my dad. He was trying to be quiet, but I knew what had happened. His dad, my grandfather, had unexpectedly died. Losing your dad immediately became the worst thing I could ever imagine.
After the phone call, my dad came to sit on the sofa. What he did next literally set the course of my life. He put his arm around me to console me. Here he was, going through the worst thing I could imagine, and he was concerned about me?
This, I realized, is what it means to be a father.
Over the course of my life, when I’ve read Bible verses such as John 3:16, I’ve come to realize that this is the depth of God’s love for us. Deeper, even, because this verse tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” It’s a love that goes even deeper than the love my dad showed me.
This is what it means that God is our Father.
My mom answered the phone and quickly handed it to my dad. He was trying to be quiet, but I knew what had happened.
Forty years later, I was enjoying an unremarkable breakfast with my wife and two kids. I can’t remember a single thing we talked about, but I will forever remember what happened next. Afterward we walked out of the restaurant, my wife and I hugged our older child, and she turned and walked away, to college. That was it. She was off.
We got in the car and started the 989-mile drive back home. We didn’t say much during that long drive. In the months to come, when the house just felt off, I kept thinking about that moment. I had expected tears from my daughter, some hint that this was hard for her.
She hadn’t given us that. Neither had I to my parents when I departed for college.
“This is how it’s supposed to be”
I remember sitting on the front porch with my dad a few nights before I left. He was drinking a beer; I’m confident that I had my customary two sips and no more. That night he told me something that he’s told me many times since.
“This is how it’s supposed to be,” he said, talking about me going off to college. “You’re supposed to go off and live your life. That was the whole point.”
This, I now realized, is also what it means to be a father.
It also reveals how God is our Father.
God may have sent Jesus, but Jesus said yes. He went. Jesus chose the path of the cross, the path of death and life. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus chose to go to Jerusalem, chose the cross, chose suffering and death for you and me and all of us. He found a calling and followed it. God wants the same for all his children.
This is also what it means that God is our Father.
God’s love isn’t just meant to keep us safe, though. It’s also meant to send us on our way.
My younger child will soon be following his big sister off to college. I wonder what his path will be, not just in college but in life. What will it be like watching him walk away as my daughter did? It’s hard to imagine, but it’s coming. As my dad said, that’s the point. Part of it, anyway. The other part is knowing we are loved more than we could ever imagine.
God is a loving parent, better than even the best of moms or dads. That love isn’t just meant to keep us safe, though. It’s also meant to send us on our way.
I’ve been truly blessed to have the parents I do. I hope my kids feel the same way. I also hope and pray that the love poured on them by God, their mother and me will lead them to the life God intended for them. If it does, I know that somewhere, somehow, they will bless others as they have been blessed, and I know what joy it will bring them and others.
This is what it means that God is our Father.
