Written By Ben Dankaka
Meditation – Psalm 103:13
Generally, parents love their children. Anyone who is sensible and mentally stable will love his or her child without being told to do so. It doesn’t take training to love your own child. You don’t have to go to school in order to learn how to love your child. You may need some teaching on how to train your child, but when it comes to loving your child, nobody has to instruct you to do that. Because parents naturally love their children, they do whatever it takes to feed, cloth, educate and protect them. Children do not need to pay their parents before enjoying their love and affection. All they need to do is to stay in their presence and honor them. As long as children revere their parents, and hang around them, their food, clothing, education and protection is guaranteed.
When you recognize the role that parents play in the lives of their children, you will understand the role that God wants to play in your life. The scriptures say that “as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him”. That is, as parents love their children, God also love those who “fear” Him. To fear God, means to revere Him. Like in the case of parenting, when we revere God and stay in His presence, He will surely feed, cloth, educate and protect us. Just as our parents father us, God also wants to father us.
The relationship between parents and their children; and God’s relationship with us, is similar because of the way God created man. When God created Adam, it was with a combination of His Spirit and the dust of the ground, which forms our body. Ever since, man has been in partnership with God multiplying that body while God delivers the spirit in the body. So while we are related to our parents because of our body, our bond with God is due to our spirit. For that reason, every human has an earthly father and a heavenly Father. This is why God and parents play similar roles.
But while we can compare earthly fathering with God’s fathering, it is important for us to know that God’s love for us is greater than the love of our earthly parents. This is so because we are not earthly beings, we are in fact, spirit beings. It is the spirit that makes the man and not the body. For it was only when God breath His Spirit into the earth body that it became a living being. Unlike our parent’s love, God’s love is eternal. God himself said through Isaiah, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” Know this: God loves you.
Prayer: Lord, thank you loving me. Amen.
REFERENCES/FURTHER STUDY: Psalm 8:13; Genesis 2:7; Isaiah 49:15
Unless otherwise stated all scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version.