Everlasting Father
Thursday last week I spent eight hours in the car with my father. He was on his way home to Ohio from a meeting in Alabama, and I decided last minute to go with him.
While in Ohio, I attended the thesis exhibit of a friend graduating from art school. Her exhibit, called “Daughters,” portrayed the broken relationships of five young women and their fathers. The pieces had titles like “Distractions” and “Working Late,” and featured a mixed media painting and a graphite drawing of each woman as well as an open suitcase displaying the baggage with which their fathers had, in most cases passively, burdened them (for example, the “Distractions” suitcase held a television, a newspaper, and a phone). The work was stunning; but I looked around the room, and many of the young women in the paintings were there, and I felt the depth of their loss.
Although I have a healthy and close relationship with my father, I realize we each have some hand-me-downs from the past: when I was five, Papa took a job that required him to travel the majority of the next fifteen years. Even though he made sure to be home for every birthday and holiday and major sporting event, when I think of my growing up years I remember overall anxiety at his absence. Many nights I cried myself to sleep in a panic that his plane would crash or our house would burn down, and I’d never see Papa again.
Fatherhood is a major theme in Scripture, from Old Testament stories to Jesus’ parables and teachings. God is shown to be not just the Father of all as Creator, but also the Provider for and Protector of his children. As the prophesied Everlasting Father he takes on the role that once left many of us with such heartache.
The eight-hour car ride last week was filled with non-stop conversation. Papa is my friend, my advisor, my defender, my hero. It’s relieving to know that God is those things and so much more.