Fatherhood has a way of teaching you profound lessons about our Heavenly Father. Lately, I've been contemplating one facet of my relationship with Asher. If you follow me on social, you know I dote on the kid, as is evidenced by the abundance of photos I post of him. In turn, he adores me. I can't tell you how wonderful and grounding it is, to come home from a long day at work, whether it was a great day or an awful one, and have his round face brighten up upon my arrival. He immediately exclaims "Daddy!" and wants to hug on me, which is never a bad way to be welcomed home.
It is with this context in mind that I consider his reaction when I discipline him. I don't hit, but I am pretty firm in my words, volume, body posture, and hand gestures when he has done something that disappoints or angers me. I don't want to physically hurt him when I am sharp with him, but I do want it to sting, because I want him to feel my disappointment and anger.
And boy does he ever. When he realizes I am disciplining him, his face immediately collapses into tears. And he soon after calls out to me in desperation, "I want a hug!"
Pause with me and consider such a reaction. His loving father, who he adores, has turned on him. Gone is the doting, and instead is scolding and disapproval and instruction. And it pains Asher to receive it all. And in that pain, he reaches out to me because he wants to know that I still love him. And of course I do hug him, and I tell him that I love him, even if I am at the same time telling him that he has done wrong.
And I think that our relationship with God is like this. He loves us deeply and affectionately. His face beams when our face beams in His presence. He longs to hold and hug and lavish us.
But He also chooses to discipline, to express disapproval, to demonstrate anger. This too is part of the Father's love, even as my love for Asher includes correction and rebuke when he is in the wrong.
Yet in that correction and rebuke, the Father will still hug us. We are His children, just like Asher is my child. Of course I will dote on him, in love. Of course I will discipline him, from that same love. And of course I will hug him in the midst of disciplining him, also because I love him and want him to know that is still true even when I am disappointed and angry. Just like our Heavenly Father.
Of course, I fall far short of God's divine standard. Yet this is the very point that the author of the book of Hebrews is making in Hebrews 12:7-10. We as finite and flawed earthly fathers know to discipline our children out of love, so how much more should we know that our Heavenly Father desires to discipline us more perfectly from a more perfect love. Behold, what a mighty love that is, and how wonderful for us His children to be found in it, to be disciplined by it, and to be hugged in the midst of such discipline.
"It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness." - Hebrews 12:7-10
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