In September 2014, we came back
to Calgary following a short, 3 year residency in Houston, Texas. My youngest
son was in Grade 2 at that time and he was enrolled in St. Albert the Great
School. As I was not working at that time, I was the one responsible for
bringing him to school at 8:10am and picking him up at 2:40pm everyday.
One afternoon, I was coming
back early from doing an errand, I decided to drop by Tim Horton’s for coffee
and donut as I have not had one since our return. I was enjoying every bite of
that sugary donut and every sip of that coffee when I noticed that it was
2:55pm already.
I literally jumped out of my
seat and run to my car and God knows how many traffic laws I have violated that
afternoon (good thing, there was no traffic camera along 130th
avenue and no police patrolling the area) and when I got to the place where
parents picking up their children park their cars, it was almost empty.
I saw my son further down the playing
field and I started running and shouting out his name. The field was so wide
and my voice was just a tiny sound in the vastness of that field. From that far
distance, I could see his shoulders dropped and I could feel his pain. My son
would have been thinking why on earth I have forgotten him. I continue to run
towards him while calling out his name and finally he turned around and he
started running towards me and called out to me – daddy! At this point,
everything seems to have slowed down as in a slow motion effect in a movie and
we embraced.
He calls me daddy everyday and
there is no other name he calls me but daddy. But for some reason, it suddenly
meant something different for me. I genuinely felt that I was really a dad and
it was a call of love, excitement and joy and I could sense that there is
nothing more important for him at that time but me. The feeling was mutual.
As a cradle Catholic, it is
easy to overlook that God is our Father. It is a word we use to pray everyday
or a word we hear in most of the liturgy, a word we use to profess our faith.
But Jesus, in teaching His disciples to pray and to call God – Abba, He really
meant that He is our Father.
By far, the most compelling
parable about God as our Father is the parable of the prodigal son. In here, we
see how this father, after being violated by his second son, still longs and
waits everyday for the return of his lost son. We can downplay this father’s
state of mind, but Jesus is trying to let us experience what kind of love is
this – that God loves us as in like crazy love.
Like my own personal experience
of being a “wandering” father, God our Father will never exchange us for coffee
and donut. No matter how far we are from Him and even seemingly we can’t see
Him, He sees us and He feels our pain and He longs for our return. We can run
back to His loving embrace and like Jesus, we should call out His name, for
truly is He is our – Abba!
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