Tag: God the Father

Who are we?

My daughter is graduating this spring. We were discussing how she feels about this change. There is so much uncertainty at this point of her life. Not only are young adults deciding what they want to do, but more importantly who they want to be.

As she decides who she wants to be and what she wants to do, I asked her to remember who created her. After all, the most important thing is not how we feel about ourselves, but who God says we are. He says we are His children. What my daughter does for a living and how much she makes doesn’t matter in his eyes. He cares that we recognize him as our father and that we assume the dignity and responsibilities that go along with this.

As swiftly as the years pass I am confident my beautiful girl will face the world shoulders back and head up. Always remembering that she is a child of God.

John 14: 1-4 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

The great gardener

Spring is here. Always later in Calgary than almost everywhere else. I spent some time yesterday and today digging in my garden. Doing a bit of clean up and weeding. Working around the new growth, trying to not disrupt the perennials that are trying to peak their way above the ground.

Weeding the garden beds, raking, and thinking about what fertilizer I might need this year. What I can plant and where I should plant it. I love gardening. Time I can take for myself, by myself.

The decisions I make now dictate what will grow in my garden over the summer months. I won’t have grapes at harvest time, because I’m not planting them. I can only harvest what I plant. Weather, conditions and the vagaries of nature will impact the success of my harvest but I decide what to plant.

It’s the same in my life, there are many things I can’t control, illness, economics, the government, the list could go on. I can however, decide who I will walk with through the trials of life. I can decide whose guidance and commandment I will let influence my decisions. I can’t control the weather, but I can choose the gardener.

Isaiah 58: 11 The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a
sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

The light of the moon

God is like the sun; blazing, bright and overpowering. Moses hid his face when he approached the burning bush. Our humanity, our sin, keeps us from being able to understand God. Just as the heat and furious power of the sun prevents us from fully understanding it. Yet we live by His light. Everything we have is because of the sun and its warm rays.

He sent His own son to earth as a man. Jesus crossed the bridge between man and God. He showed us, in terms we can understand, what God is. He was the human example, a reflection of God. In the same way the moon reflects the sun. The moon does not have its own light, but rather that of the sun. But we can stare at the moon in a way that we can’t look directly at the sun.

Like the moon, Jesus was a reflection of God. The light belongs to God, but in taking a lesser, human form he gave us a version of the light that we can examine and study and understand.

John 14: 6 – 7 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.
From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”