Father to the Fatherless
Genesis 21: 8-21
Father to the Fatherless
There are some moments you just never forget. One of mine is when the nurse put Steph down just after he has been born. It was a difficult birth and there were quite a few tense moments there but when she laid him on that tea trolley contraption, time froze. I was overwhelmed by the fact that the baby laying in front of me was a boy, one I am the father off. Marise came into the world in a much easier way two years later but I felt exactly the same when she was put into my arms.
When it comes to fatherhood, we do not only have pleasant memories but also painful ones. It’s not easy being a parent. It is not easy to be a father. Every father has looked back and felt that he really messed up on occasion, that he could have done better. Also, when we think of our own fathers, we don’t only have pleasant memories but painful ones. Memories of times where we either felt neglected, ignored or wounded by things our fathers said and did (or things they didn’t say and do). This kind of woundedness, the experience of being hurt by your father is so common that John Bly canonized it in his narrative about manhood. He explains that every son has a memory of being hurt by a father.
There simply is no perfect family nor parent child relationship in the Bible. Not one. Abraham might have been called the father of faith and he is, but he was no perfect father when it came to his own children. Actually, he might have been a pretty lousy one. I mean, imagine living in the time of Abraham. You haven’t met him but get to meet his son Isaac and inquire from the boy what kind of man he is. “Well, I don’t really talk to him much. You see, there was this one time where God had to stop him from sacrificing me. That was after I got everything ready”. Imagine later, bumping into Ishmael and him telling you how his father chased him and his mother away into the dessert because his other wife was afraid of being laughed at and her son not inheriting everything. You would consider phoning childcare services! (only there is no phone nor a childcare service yet-the stuff nightmares are made off!)
They way fathers are absent and they way they sometimes fail their children by the mistakes they make, always threaten to turn a story into a tragedy. The definition of a tragedy is a story where a character suffers a great loss or wound and tries to survive despite it. For many the absence or treatment of their father feels like something that forces them to live this story. Some say fatherlessness, abusive and absent fathers, is one of the biggest problems in the world today, a problem that is the cause of many other problems. I tend to agree.
What does the Bible have to say when it comes to fatherhood and the experience of fatherlessness?
Fathers are imperfect
It wasn’t that Abraham didn’t love Ishmael. Verse 11 shows us that saying: “The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son”. Abraham did not want to send his son away. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his son, it was that he did not know how best to express that love and maintain peace and be true to his calling.
I guess there are some evil fathers that simply do not love their children, but it is sad to think that with most fathers it is not the case. They really do love their children, but they are torn between their love and other demands of life and then don’t always know how to handle that. Even great fathers love imperfectly. What makes being a father so hard, is that most of us don’t get to be just a father. We are husbands and business owners. We have vocational callings and we also have our own internal struggles and turmoil raging inside of us.
So, know this about your father and know this about being a father. Fathers love with an imperfect love in an imperfect world among imperfect people. They come up against seemingly impossible choices. They encounter realities that they wouldn’t have survived but by the grace of God. Maybe knowing this could make it a little easier to forgive your father and even your forefathers. More importantly, maybe it could make it easier to forgive yourself if you are a father. All fathers are imperfect but there are two things that makes you an even worse father. One is denying that you have shortcomings. The other is to be so guilt ridden about your shortcomings and mistakes that you stop trying to be a better father.
It is difficult. We were created to be loved perfectly. We are loved perfectly by God but being imperfect ourselves, we are not always aware of that so we tend to expect people, especially our parents to love us perfectly. They cannot do that. We have to make peace with this fact, and seek our peace and resolve not in the repentance and perfection of our fathers but in the perfect love of God who forgave us.
God uses imperfect fathers mightily
Abraham being an imperfect father, did not prevent God from fulfilling the plans He had. It didn’t cancel the plans he had for Abraham, it didn’t cancel the plans he had for Ishmael. It didn’t cancel the plans he had with Israel and +the world. You see, our imperfections are not something to live in paralysing fear off precisely because God’s grace rather than our own imperfections get to have the last say.
Abraham sees no other way and God does the unexpected. He tells Abraham to listen to the unfair request of his wife. But God’s plans look different than Sarah’s. She probably thought it would be inevitable for Hagar and Ishmael to die. Even Hagar herself thought so at a stage. But God opened her eyes to two things: Resources she was unaware of like the well of water. Secondly, he opened her eyes to the great plan he has with this boy. She got to play a pivotal role in this plan of God. Even Abrahams cruelest act in her eyes, became the very ingredient by which God’s plans for Ishmael has been fulfilled.
It is ever so valuable to explore what pain an absent or an imperfect father brought into your life. It helps you to understand yourself and the way you react so much better. But be careful to not let your paternal pain be your excuse to stay a victim. Let it not blind you to the wells God has put at your disposal. That would be to deny that the God you belong to, is bigger and stronger than the man that fathered you.
This brings me to the next important point.
God is a father to the fatherless
It is so interesting, verse 16 states that the mother sobbed. Never does it say that the baby boy cried. But then verse 17 says God heard the boy crying. You know who hears a boy crying? Let me tell you a story…
When I was about 28, I was youth pastor at a large church that at the time had 4000 congregants. I was responsible for preaching in the evening services which were mostly filled with young families. So, babies cried all the time. I didn’t hear them. It became part of the background noise. But Steph was a baby at this stage and this one evening he started crying. I was so distracted that to Isabel’s embarrassment, I had to ask her to go to the mothers room. Why? Because a father hears his child crying.
So, Hagar leaves her baby. She is so overwhelmed with sadness that she sobs. She doesn’t even seem to hear the baby crying. So, if this verse says God heard the boy crying it says way more than just he heard the boy crying. It says God is this boy’s father. This boy, who for all practical purposes just lost his father, now is under the care of a heavenly Father that notices his distress and equips his mother to attend to it. He instructs this mother in detail what to do with this boy. Verse 20 says that God was with the boy and that he became an archer. Archery was a quite the skill to acquire. It enabled you to be both a good provider hunting and a good protector against enemies. If there was one thing a woman wouldn’t have been able to do in Abraham’s time, it was to teach a boy archery. No Katnisses in those days yet! The only way in which Ishmael could have acquired this, was if he had a substitute father. And he had. It was God. Maybe through someone, maybe supernaturally and directly, God taught this boy archery. Something only a Father could do.
God reveals himself as the father of the fatherless in this passage. Also, as the partner of the single parent. If you go through the Bible, you will find that the image that is used most often to describe God is that of a Father. Some say that is too sexist to their liking. And though it is important to note that God is also described with feminine images, like a hen caring for chicks, God being described as a Father so often is not sexist. It is God attending to one of the greatest needs and pain in our world. That of fatherlessness.
In the time of Jesus, the family was everything. At age 14 a boy went into the trade his father went into. Society were family focused and orientated yet Jesus speaks of leaving your father. He once denied the right of someone to bury his own father. He said that He will cause strife among family members. Jesus most certainly didn’t say these things because he was anti-family. Even on the cross, he told John to take care of his mother. But Jesus did want to convey a strong truth with all these statements. His blood and the ties it binds are thicker than the water of the womb. The family of faith that his sacrifice creates builds bonds that should determine our identity even more than our family relationships does. In Him we have many other brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers than just those we share genes with. And God is our Father infinitely more intimately than any earthly father could be.
Close
Who of us doesn’t carry at least one of the following: The pain of a father’s absence, neglect, mistakes or the pain of our own absence, neglect and mistakes as fathers and mothers? God’s Word has a message when it comes to both of these today. For those struggling with pain from a father, God says no father is perfect and no imperfect father could spoil his good plans for his children, because ultimately He is our real Father. He loves us more than even the best earthly father could. To those guilt ridden as fathers or mothers, God says much the same. He works perfectly even through imperfect people. There is more hope than we think. You can forgive yourself. You can forgive others and trust in God. He forgives you and works through you despite your shortcomings. Keeping trying to work with Him rather than against Him.
There is this guy, Rob Kenney, on You Tube. He grew up in Washington Sate with an abusive father that later abandoned him. Painful stuff! He is now an internet sensation because he makes handy “Dad, how do I?” video’s on the internet for people without dads. In what He is doing it is not difficult to see the reflection of a God who is a Father to the fatherless. How beautiful the world would look if we all emulate this God in our own ways by assisting those who to some extent experience the pain of being fatherless?
The blood of Jesus is thicker than the water of the womb. God knows archery. You are His Son. You are His daughter. Your life is also His arrow. He will hit the mark with it.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman June 21st 2020