Father's Day Scripture Sunday

O Lord, You are my God; I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name; For You have worked wonders, Plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness. Isaiah 25:1 (NASB)

Another overarching theme of the Boundary Waters Search and Rescue saga (Beyond Belief, Beyond Imagination, and Book Three which I’ve not yet titled) is God’s faithfulness. In fact, the verse above plays a seminal role in Beyond Belief, ministering to Jack in one of his darkest hours.

Like Jack, I have learned that our great God is faithful, through the good times, the hard times, and even through the times when I can’t see Him or choose to ignore Him. He is the role model for every father back to Adam. The verse above is, to me, one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. God’s faithfulness, unlike man’s, is perfect. It is worthy of exultation and thanksgiving.

My beloved father, celebrating dessert on our one and only cruise together. We had such fun.

I can’t let this day pass without remembering the other fathers in my life. My wonderful dad who is celebrating his 13th Father’s Day in the arms of his Heavenly Father. But he was my dad with skin on for 49 wonderful years. He, like God, was faithful, to his faith, his family and his friends. He wasn’t perfect, and he knew it, but that didn’t stop him from trying to be the best man he could be and growing as a man of God when life taught him hard lessons. I learned so much from him about faithfulness.

My father-in-law, Ray, has been my dad with skin on since long before I lost my own father. He is gentle, kind man who’s also been faithful to his faith, his family and his friends for going on 87 long and sometime challenging years. I love him as a father and am so grateful to him for his encouragement, his humor and his wisdom.

I can see so much of Ray in my husband, who, sadly, never got the chance to be a father because of my battle with infertility. Even so, his faithfulness to me never wavered in the course of our battle to have children and through the sometimes bitter road to accepting that God’s answer to us was ‘no’. Just as an aside, he's a gentle, terrific dad to our sweet senior, black feline, fur-baby, Sierra Binxy-Boo Cayemberg. (She’s immortalized in print in all three books, because to be a feline’s chosen family is an extraordinary and rewarding experience.)

Sierra Binxy-Boo Cayemberg, our fur baby.

My brother, brother-in-law, and nephew must also make appearances in this list of faithful fathers. They’ve all been through gut-wrenching experiences in the course of fatherhood, yet all of them have remained faithful to their calling as a father (and grandfather in my brother-in-law’s case). I love them all and am so grateful to have them in my life.

Are you remembering someone special today? I hope you are able to celebrate with your father standing beside you. Or is your relationship with your father something you choose to forget? If that is the case, I am so sorry. That is not what God intended. I pray that you can look to your Heavenly Father, celebrate His faithfulness and rest in the arms of your Abba. If you’re missing your father today like I am, I pray that God’s perfect faithfulness will comfort you and that you can feel your Abba’s gentle touch on your shoulder. (Abba is an Aramaic term for father---it is a familiar term, like daddy. It is the term God gave to believers.)

May you all find peace and blessing on this Lord’s day.

Blessings,

Joy