On Being a Dad

I have learned a lot about what it means to be a father in the past six months. By no means would I consider myself and expert, but I have figured out a few things:

• Changing a diaper is not as bad an experience as I thought it would be.
• Sans diaper, baby-boy poop can travel as far as baby-boy pee.
• You can understand a fair amount of what a baby is trying to tell you if you're around him long enough.
• You can eat very quickly while only using one hand.
• Not much beats coming home from a long day at work at having your son smile at you.

As I ponder this experience of fatherhood, I remember a quote from a book by one of my college professors, Dr. Rodney Reeves. In his book A Genuine Faith: How to Follow Jesus Today, he writes,

Jesus cannot teach me how to be a good father because he was never married,
and that is too bad--not just for him but also for me. If he had been married,
if he had fathered many children, then his example would provide another model
of Christian behavior.

Jesus wasn't a father, he was a son. He can't teach me (at least not by example) how to be a dad, only how to be a son to my own dad. But God the Father knows exactly what it means to be a dad; after all, it's in his job title! Through his loving patience with the nation of Israel, I learn how to be patient with my own son. The sacrifice he made for me by sending his son to his death shows me the radical nature of sacrifice I am to provide for my own family as a father. God the Father instructs, exhorts, disciplines and provides for his children out of perfect love, giving me an example to follow as one whose task is the same--being a dad.

May I ever learn from his example!