When our son was growing up, we lived in the piney woods of East Texas. It was a little boys dream. He would disappear into the woods for hours with his friends and reappear for one of two occasions
- Sometimes he had a scraped knee or a bump on the head and he needed my help.
- And other times, he would bring a trash bag full of critters like turtles or fish for me to see. He was so proud. Of course, his mom would convince him that their mommies were looking for them and he would release them back into the wild.
Either way, he knew where to go. I was his father, and I was there for him … in the good and the bad. In Matthew 7, Jesus taught His disciples that we have a heavenly father who only knows how to give good gifts. He said, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him?”
Unfortunately, I talk to men and women all the time at our shelters whose father was absent at best and abusive at worse. When I try to tell them that God wants to be their Father, the thoughts, and memories of a father they conjure aren’t always the best. They say something like, “If that’s what a father looks like, I don’t need God.”
The truth is, I or no one else can convince someone that God loves them with a perfect love. But we can show them. And that is what we do every day at Faith Mission and Faith Refuge. We show them love in action with a meal or a bed. We offer to pray with them or just listen. And then, when the time is right, we tell them that the reason we are there for them is because God has been there for us. We share the Gospel.
The force of the parable of the father is in the contrast rather than the comparison between God and man. Jesus makes a “how much more argument” to remind us that even at our best we fall short of the overwhelming goodness of God.. His gifts are always good.
