A young father was a teacher in an institution that gave him his summers free. He was glad about this because it gave him more time with his wife and five year old son. During the summer his son and he were inseparable. He took his son almost everywhere he went, whether it was on errands around town, or into his workshop in the garage to work on some project, or outside for walks, or into the TV room to watch a ballgame, or to shoot hoops in the driveway at a basket adjusted perfectly downward to suit his size and strength. The father delighted in his son and in his responses to all the different stimuli each day would bring. He thrived on observing the arc of the boy’s learning curve, what he could do or understand one day that he couldn’t the day before.
The young boy adored his father and imitated his actions and gestures. He believed there was nothing his father could not do and do well. He also trusted the word and intent of his father completely and unhesitatingly, because his father always kept his promises. He knew that from experience. Sometimes he would curl up with Daddy on the sofa during a game and fall asleep in his arms or against his chest. That was one of his favorite things to do because it gave him such a strong sense of security and well-being. The young father was there for and with his little son in every possible way that he could be. It was the antithesis of the contemporary situation often heard about, of the deadbeat dad who never met or took any responsibility for his child, or the distant dad who is physically present but emotionally absent, or the parent who is present and involved but in a negative abusive way. As a parent he was all that most of us failed to receive from our own parents, and consequently have failed to be for our own children, some of us more woefully than others. (And yet we can't in good conscience lay our own parental failures at the doorstep of our parents.)
All of this was why it was so traumatic when the father was suddenly called away from his home one of those summers. His brother on the west coast had met with an emergency that required the intervention and assistance of his closest relatives. He could not bring his son with him and still be available in the way his brother needed him to be. Of course the boy’s mother was there for him, but the kind of companionship he had grown so accustomed to with his father was abruptly ripped away with no advance notice. Yes, the separation was temporary, but that awareness did little to mitigate the intensity of the boy’s feeling of loss. Even his father, knowing he would soon be back home, felt the ache of the lack of that little pressure against his chest on the sofa in the evening and the sound of the boy’s excited and inquisitive voice throughout the day.
This entire scenario is fraught with such meaning for me when I think of the fellowship between the Father and the Son in eternity past and while Jesus was on earth. He too adored and emulated his Father, believing and knowing He could do anything in His omnipotence. He too trusted his Father fully knowing His Word and promise were sure because He had never failed him. He knew too that his Father delighted in him and in seeing him learn the necessary obedience in his earthly life and ministry, and the delight was mutual. (This reminds me that the name “Eden” means “delight” so surely Adam and Eve experienced some of this fullness in relationship before the Fall.) So too did both Father and Son experience trauma when their fellowship was severed in the momentary separation on the Cross. Maybe they were somewhat prepared for it when Jesus left the glory he had with the Father in order to take on human flesh 33 years before.
Sin means separation from God and, since our sin was upon Jesus at the cross, there had to be that moment of separateness between him and his Father, when he cried out of his humanity for understanding, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me!?”. Even so, his lack of a full understanding in that moment did not prevent him shortly afterward from committing his spirit into His Father’s capable hands.