The Open Arms of God

A man at a bar surprised his drinking partner by saying that he had decided to become a minister. His friend laughed and told him that he'd be a hopelessly incompetent clergyman, and bet him that he couldn't even recite the most well-known prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Accepting the challenge, the wannabe clergyman piously intoned, "Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake..."

"O.K., O.K." interrupted the challenger. “I'm surprised that you do know the Lord's Prayer!"

It would be hard to find a Christian who doesn't know the Lord's Prayer, the "Our Father." However, many Christians don't really know Our Father himself! That is, they don't really know him intimately and relate to him in a warm child-to-father relationship. Yet, as Henry Ward Beecher reminds us, "There is no creature so poor or so low, that he may not look up with childlike confidence to the Creator of the universe and exclaim, 'You are my Father!'" Perhaps youngsters more than any segment of our society relate to God with relative ease; they even find it natural to give him a name (“Harold be thy name," though some kids prefer to call him Art: "Art in heaven"!) .

For those rare persons who do relate to the Father seriously and authentically with a true spiritual intimacy, their life is radically different from that of others. They see in God a limitless goodness, and goodness implies kindness, care, and concern. Prayer, for instance, for these devout souls, is always a fervent and delightful experience, and is never regarded as an onerous duty. Their trust in the Father's loving providence keeps them serene in the midst of the most harrowing situations in life. Any suffering or deprivation that God permits in their life is regarded as it is described in Hebrews 12:11: "It produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

Those who have been thus trained have learned a secret, namely, that as we find God in all things while we have them, we shall find all things in God when they are taken away.

God Has No Grandchildren

There's a profound truth in the platitude that says that God has no grandchildren; either you know him firsthand as his child, or you do not know him as he wants to be known. A priest, for instance, who is called "Father," cannot be a sort of a parent showing you God as your grandfather; he can "father" you only as Paul claimed to "father" the Corinthians through providing them with divine life through the gospel (1 Cor.4: 15). Paul knew that it was only the heavenly Father, "from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth derives its name" (Eph.3: 15).

The range of those who know God "firsthand" can be narrowed at the very outset, since Christianity is the only major religion that teaches that God is your father and mine. Muslims have 99 names for God, but not the title, "Our Father." Even the ancient Jews, who accepted God as the Father of Israel as a people, did not accept him as "my" Father or "your" Father. The Hebrew Bible revealed to the Jews the divinity and omnipotence and creatorhood of God, but not his fatherhood as relating to us personally as his children; however, the Old Testament in 2 Samuel did prophesy that this relationship would eventually be revealed (see 2 Cor.6: 18).

God's offer of this close spiritual relationship with his human creatures was revealed only in New Testament times, by the very one who pre-eminently claimed God as his Father, namely the Son of God, Jesus Christ. "No one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matt.11: 27). This revelation of God's fatherly love for us was to be an ongoing revelation, because, when praying to his Father for believers, Jesus said, "I have made you known to them and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them" (John 17: 26). And Paul prayed that the Ephesians would come to know him better (Eph.1: 17).

Yet even with this remarkable New Testament revelation, still not every Christian can be called a child of God in the spiritual sense, by having become his children "through faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). "To all who received him (the Word made flesh), to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). The basic decision to "receive" Jesus, God the Son (in love) and to "believe" in him (by faith) are prerequisites for this spiritual relationship of filiation with God the Father.

Some of the Jewish antagonists of Jesus, though devout religionists, did not fulfill these requirements, and hence could not be called children of God, except in the most pristine sense, namely, by being his human creatures, "made to his image and likeness" (Gen. 1:26), and also by virtue of belonging to his chosen race (Is. 43:6-7). But their lack of a holy, intimate, spiritual and personal filiation with God was affirmed by Jesus very clearly in John 8:42-47: To the non-believing Jews, he said, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God...Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word. You belong to your father the devil, and you willingly carry out your father's desires... Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not listen, because you do not belong to God." Milton Marcy said it well: "The man who has lost contact with God lives on the same dead-end street as the man who denies him."

We know that to be fully a child of God, the two prerequisites of faith and love go hand in hand, for, as Paul says, "faith expresses itself through love" (Gal. 5:6). But precisely why is this faith-spawned love so important for establishing a deep spiritual relationship with God as our Father? The answer is found in 1 John 4:16: "God is love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him." This mutual father-child love is educed by our loving Father-God, who yearns for a requiting of his own love for his children, by which he "crowns them with kindness and compassion" (Ps. 103:4).

The Two-Step Stairway to the Heart of God

Our human father can be regarded as one who gave rise to our existence, but that is no assurance that we necessarily experience a close loving relationship with him. Thus, a parent-child relationship may be regarded as one based merely on a biological fact, or, beyond that, it may entail a loving, warm, comfortable and very fulfilling relationship. The fullest meaning of fatherhood is found only in that second type of relationship.

The same is true of our relationship with God as our heavenly Father. The word "father" (pateras in Greek, pater in Latin) etymologically signifies a nourisher, protector, or upholder. Just as in a human parent-child relationship, our dependency on this sustained support from God can be had on two levels: On the first level, even without our consent, we are radically dependent on God as his children by virtue of being his creatures, created by him. To attain the second level, that of spiritual dependency, enjoying an awesome intimacy with him, we must be more than passively Christian. Thomas Carlyle put it deftly: "What this country needs are more persons who know God other than by hearsay."

Jesus, the Way to the Father's Heart

I recently saw a challenging bumper sticker that stated, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved!” That almost paraphrases the words of James 4:8: “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” He comes to us often, but we are seldom at home. How do we go about getting to really know God, and not just know about him? Scripture tells us that we must reach out and, as it were, embrace God, This "reaching out to God" is a choice on our part to “receive” him, who is made eminently available to us by appearing in human form. As John clearly states: "To all who received him (the Son of God incarnate--the Word made flesh)... he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). “Children of God”—not merely creatures of God, like a rock, a tree or a cow.

As a child I remember “receiving” my Daddy after waiting on the front porch for him to come home from work, and he “received” me by sweeping me into his arms in a loving encounter. That delightful memory epitomizes the dialogue of love that thrills the heart of God and turns our prayer life into a simple wordless warm and welcoming hug of our “Daddy” (Abba)

Hence, it is through the God-man, Jesus, that we have this special "access to the Father by the Spirit" and thus become “members of God's household"(Eph.2: 18-19). Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Jesus does not become a detour en route to the Father, since he shares one and the same divine nature: Knowing that his disciples were "slow of heart" (Luke 24:25), he launches into a detailed teaching in response to Philip: "How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" (John14:10).

Furthermore, not just Jesus is involved in this divine dynamic, but also his Holy Spirit, who is the unifying love-bond between the Father and the Son, an draws us into that sphere of divine love, since he "testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" (Rom.8: 16). Thus, as we cooperate with an awesome Trinitarian interactivity, we allow God's desire and his Old Testament promise to be fulfilled: "I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me" (2 Cor.6: 18).

At this juncture, our insight into our heavenly Father's love for us becomes electric, and wordless prayer becomes intoxicating, as we find ourselves a heartbeat away from mystical prayer, with our hearts magnetized by his love like a compass needle always pointing to the magnetic north. A German mystic said that God expresses an unutterable sigh in the human heart, and conversely, the soul utters a never-ending sigh after God. This is another way of saying what the beloved disciple wrote: "God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God and God in him" (1 John 4:16). All the created goods that we sigh after are but hopelessly blurred reflections of the supreme good that all humans ultimately aspire to.

The Give-and-Take in God's Game of Love

Did you know that "Our Father in heaven" does not mean the same as "Our Heavenly Father"? The first title, from the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:9), connotatively in Greek with Jewish overtones, addresses the Father in heaven, while the second title, as in Luke 11:13, addresses the Father from heaven. We might well think of our heavenly Father as a giver of gifts, as if coming from him in heaven (such as the gift of the Spirit mentioned in that passage). "Every good and perfect gift is from ...the Father of heavenly lights" (James 1:17). But on the other hand, we could just as easily think of our Father in heaven as the one who receives gifts from us, such as the gift of praise ("hallowed be thy name"), and the gift of embracing his will on earth as it is in heaven.

As we meditate on this mutual father-child relationship, we soon realize, among other things, that God relates to us as his children more profoundly than we relate to him as our Father. We come with our petitions to our Father in heaven; but he comes, as it were, from heaven to us as our heavenly Father gifting us by his presence and ineffable love. (This insight might well be enough to prevent the spiritual tragedy mentioned by the mystic, Johannes Eckhart: "If we seek God only for our own good and profit, we are not seeking God.")

Hence, the "open arms of God" are open for both giving and receiving. They are open to release upon us his divine "armload" of gifts, but they are open also to receive us, catching us up in his merciful and loving embrace, as did the father of the returning prodigal son.

Our Father is a Working Father

In all his dispensations God is at work for our good. "My Father is always at his work to this very day" (John 5:17). He works in our prosperity, by testing our gratitude; in our mediocrity, he "calls us to a holy life" (2 Tim. 1:9) and supports our efforts to improve: "God, works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:13), and when we attain holiness, he "surrounds us with his blessings and favors" (Ps. 5:12); in misfortune, he seeks our submission; in temptation, our steadfastness; in the shadow of death, he comforts us (Ps. 23:4), as he does in every hurtful circumstance: "The Father of compassion...comforts us in all our troubles" (2 Cor.1: 3-4). At all times, he is testing our reliance on him. This filial trust in God in its most sublime form is one of the personal gifts of the Spirit, called Piety (in the Septuagint version of Is. 11:2).

Charles Robinson's insight is as simple as it is deep: "There are times when God asks nothing of his children except silence, patience and tears." God could have kept Daniel out of the lions' den; he could have kept Paul and Silas out of jail. God has never promised to keep us out of hard places. However, he has promised to go with us through every hard place, and to bring us through victoriously. A suffering heathen asks, Where is God?, while the true Christian asks, Where is he not? Charles Spurgeon exclaimed: "As sure as God puts his children in the furnace, he will be in the furnace with them." In any adversity or opposition, God and you together make a majority. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31).

And while the Lord works in us, he enables us to work with and for him: "God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good work" (2 Cor.9: 8), and he will "equip you with everything good for doing his will" (Heb.13:21). In all this, the Lord doesn't regard our ability or inability, but our availability: "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace" (1 Pet. 4:10). But while, like Jesus, we "must be about our Father's business," and trust in him, still we must do our part. Let us not forget the seafarer's motto: "Pray, sailor, but row for shore." Or the Indian proverb, "Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

Step back and look at reality from the broadest perspective of human existence. From that stance, if you have learned to let yourself be habitually enfolded in the arms of God, you will find yourself almost spontaneously uttering with St. Augustine the classic words found in his Confessions: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O God, and the human heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee."

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