As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.” vs. 13
Psalm 103:11-13
Even though God is beyond description and it’s really impossible for our puny minds to understand or comprehend the Divine Presence, we still have a need to use words in our conversation about God. As a result, humans have always used metaphors to try to communicate that which we sense is true about God. We lift them from our human experience and one of the favorites has been that of father. In fact, here the psalmist uses the image of a father’s compassion for his children to describe God’s compassion. Obviously this isn’t a helpful comparison for some. We’ve had fathers who didn’t show much compassion and who may have actually been pretty nasty, or even absent. But we will have a sense of what the psalmist means. We perhaps have had friends with compassionate fathers, or maybe we’ve heard of such parents. At any rate, we get what the psalmist is trying to say, that God at the core is slow to anger and is abounding with steadfast love and mercy. So even if our dad was a jerk, we know that God, who is neither male nor female, is the essence of self-giving love and sacrifice. And if the father metaphor doesn’t work for us in our God-talk, we are perfectly free to find one that does!
Thought for the Day: How does the father metaphor work for me?
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