When you don’t have a dad, “Bring Your Dad to School Day” is a dreadful day. I tell you, I don’t remember the day very well, but I do remember…the dread.
What would I say when other kids asked me, “Where’s your dad?” or “What does your dad do?” Could I really say, “I don’t know. I never met my dad”? I would come up with something… I had a knack for telling elaborate tales that made me look better in the eyes of my friends -- and a knack for making them believe me. They looked up to me.
But I didn’t lie. Not this time. I just stayed home.
It was hard growing up without a dad. Even harder was not knowing his real name or what he looked like or where he was -- or, for that matter, why he really left. It was all a hazy mystery to me. He was one big question mark in my life. I was an inquisitive kid, but suffice it to say that I didn’t get the answers I was looking for.
When I was 19, I found my Father. Sure, my dad was still long gone -- someone and somewhere I might never know in this life. But I found my heavenly Father, the true Father to whom our father here below ought to point and of whom he is meant to remind us.
I know His name: “the Lord of hosts is His name” (Is 51:15). I know what He looks like, for Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). And I know where He is: “Call no man on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9).
My dad may have disappeared, but my Father is everlasting, “the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Js 1:17). Even though my father below abandon me, the Lord will take me up (cf. Ps 27:10).
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