There’s been a lot of screaming lately… a lot of screaming…..
Even I have been tempted to scream.
Which reminded me that it was said screaming that inspired this Blog. My first entry was: Why I’m Just a Dad
So I would like to circle back around to it. Why?
I guess it’s good to remind yourself why you do what you do every once and a while…
Especially when you have two teething toddlers, one girl who is “no longer four”, and a lot of accompanying chaos.
Do any of you remember the season 7 opener of the hit show NCIS. It’s called “Truth or Consequences.” In it they use a season 7 plot line to explore the major themes and characters of the show… it’s done well. I like it more than I like the pilot episode, because it does a good job at introducing the characters, but also showing how they have grown.
It is reflective in its essence
Well I don’t know that I can pull ALL of THAT of, BUT I would like to share my original post and then afterwords reflect with some quick thoughts.
Why I’m Just a Dad: Servant and Leader
You know what’s funny.
As I listen to my crying baby in the other room…
Just thinking.
She makes no distinction between the concept of servant and the concept of leader.
To her they are one and the same. She just says. Dad.
“But the greatest among you shall be your servant.”
Matthew 23:11 TLV
Dad… being the one who I love and adore. The one who I listen to.The one that feeds me, disciplines me, forgives me, the one who protects me from those big nasty dogs.
““Therefore, pray in this way: ‘Our Father in heaven, sanctified be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Matthew 6:9-12 TLVI am NOT God, but my role as Dad is one of the closest comparisons for how I am to relate to God.
Why I’m Just a Dad: Servant and Leader
“At that hour the disciples came to Yeshua, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Amen, I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you shall never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then shall humble himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in My name, welcomes Me.”
Matthew 18:1-5 TLV
Some Thoughts
The reason why this blog is titled Just Dad vs. Just a Dad (despite its tagline) is because of the heart of this post.
We are called to image God… to take after him… so our leadership will look like His leadership…
What is His primary leadership title? Well according to Jesus… we should pray to God as: Father
Fatherhood is inherent to the nature of God. Therefore it is inherent to how we image Him. He is by his very nature a servant, very nature a leader, and that is because He is… Just Dad.
To be clear… I believe God has both traditionally masculine AND feminine characteristics.
God is the wellspring of both Fatherhood and Motherhood… He makes comparisons between Himself and both.
One of the most important references I can make as a comparison to motherhood is His compassion. Dr Carissa Quinn has some good insight here:
In the Bible, one passage stands high above the rest in terms of its importance to the biblical authors—Exodus 34:6-7. It’s the most quoted and reused passage of Scripture within Scripture, which tells us that the authors thought these verses were highly significant…
“Yahweh, Yahweh, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal-love and faithfulness.”…
It’s interesting that the very first word God uses in this description of himself is “compassionate.”
Carissa Quinn, PhD “God is Like a Nursing Mother: The Compassionate Parenthood of God1
In the most quoted and referenced passage of scripture… in the earliest full description of Himself… tied to His identity: He first describes himself as compassionate. Now compassion is not uniquely a motherly trait… not at all… BUT even the very etymology of the word in Hebrew links motherhood to it.
Let’s look at this Hebrew word and the connotations it carries. The word “compassion” in Hebrew is rakhum, and it is related to the word “womb,” or rekhem. The word itself conveys the emotion and nurture that a mother has for her vulnerable child. This relationship to the word womb also gives us a sense that compassion originates in the core of a person—a gut instinct or something that you feel in your inner being.
Carissa Quinn, PhD “God is Like a Nursing Mother: The Compassionate Parenthood of God2
A womb is not something a physical male can have… compassion is something men can have… if I’m honest though I learned compassion from my mother, from my wife, from my God.
In the book of Nehemiah he prays:
““…When they repented and cried out to You, You heard from heaven, and according to Your compassion You delivered them many times.”
Nehemiah 9:28b TLV
So now we are back to crying again. We have come full circle.
You see God’s people are always best when they understand that they are children.. that they need God.
I left out a part of Nehemiahs prayer… in fact I left out a part of the verse. I did this intentionally. What precipitated the crying out?
““But as soon as they were at rest, they returned to doing evil before You…
Nehemiah 9:28a TLV
AS SOON as they were at rest. The return to doing evil…God and his people have a history of getting into a cycle…
God delivers them…
they rebel…
God let’s them have what they want…this results in the people being oppressed…
they cry out.., God saves them…. And on and on the cycle goes.
It’s really easy to judge the people of Israel… until you realize that you ride the same cycle. (I’m talking about me)
So now I will circle around to the final verse of the original post:
At that hour the disciples came to Yeshua, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Amen, I tell you, unless you turn and become like children, you shall never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then shall humble himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in My name, welcomes Me.”
Matthew 18:1-5 TLV
God says Children are to be our hero’s. We are to emulate them… not in their falleness or stubbornness… in their childlike faith. Their love. Their humility, their awareness of their need and so much more.
I believed in this theoretically before I had kids. It was something else entirely once I had them. God constantly would remind me to turn my heart towards them.
When their screaming triggered me emotionally I ended up in therapy. I got help. I became like a child again.
In doing so… my son became my hero. My Haddie became my hero… and my little screamer…. The Queen Elizabeth herself became my muse.
Footnotes
1. Carissa Quinn, PhD “God is Like a Nursing Mother: The Compassionate Parenthood of God.” Accessed 6/23/2023: https://bibleproject.com/articles/god-is-like-a-nursing-mother/#:~:text=Consistent%20Compassion&text=What’s%20really%20interesting%20is%20that,the%20cries%20of%20her%20infant.
2. Ibid.
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