Portrait of the Father
If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. –John 14:7-9a
Geometry class.
Yes, I hear the groans! Bear with me, please.
Geometry class began with logical syllogism: If A=B and B=C, then A=C. Every geometric proof begins with a declaration of something equals something else. Here Jesus says: Knowing Me = knowing the Father. Seeing Me = seeing the Father. If you know Me, you have seen Him. (Okay, perhaps it is not a pure logical syllogism, but it certainly is a logical connection designed to foster a heart connection)
My dad was handsome, a very talented speaker, reader, singer, thinker, writer; he was passionate, tender-hearted and busy . . . very, very busy. As a result, I grew up with the idea that I could only go to this amazing man with my “big” problems, that he had no time or bandwidth for little stuff. I remember him being disappointed in me, in my behavior sometimes – the words dealt a crushing blow to a child who was wishing she could have a problem big enough to require his time.
God has designed families in such a way that our dads, especially, paint the picture of how our hearts see God the Father. As a result, my heart-picture of the Father was of someone wonderful, desirable, smart, but too busy running the universe to have time for any but large crises. No small childish need warranted attention; He was too busy with big stuff. Trying to get close to Him was a problem; I could easily pray to Jesus. I felt connected with Him. He held little kids and gave big hugs, told cool stories and had time for little conversations and long walks.
Not so with the Father.
My therapy facilitator challenged me with the words we encounter here: “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.”
So I began the process of replacing the portrait of God the Father, in my mental gallery . . . you know, the one that looks an awful lot like my dad drawn in crayon on Red Chief tablet paper. . . the shapes that represent the conclusions drawn from childhood incidents that fashion my relationship with Him.
The procedure goes like this: I read something about Jesus in the gospels that doesn’t sound like how I think of God the Father. I hold up the newspaper clipping from the scripture account next to the timeworn first-grade portrait and compare. If they are different, the problem probably lies with my God-as-Dad-picture. With my Holy Spirit X-ACTO knife, I deliberately choose to cut out that part of the Picasso-esque dad/god-picture and replace it with the Rembrandt-like report in the gospel of the heart and behavior of Jesus.
What love is displayed here that I had missed!
The benefits run in at least two directions: as my heart-view of God has become more accurate, more like the Jesus I see in the gospels, I am becoming free to relate to Him on a more realistic basis. I can come to Him with all my needs and desires; I no longer have to filter my requests through the crabby receptionist of my inept portraiture; AND, my picture of my dad has also become more realism-based. No longer held to super-human expectations, I could love and relate to him as a flawed, Jesus-loving human dad, rather than a disappointed, warm-but-distant super-hero. Now they both occupy more of their proper places!
Here’s to more sane thinking as I am
following Jesus every day in the everyday,
Christi
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