This is My Father's World?

This is my Father's world, And to my list'ning ears, All nature sings, and round me rings The music of the spheres. This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.

There is rest in the thought that we are the creation of a thoughtful and careful Creator. Nature sings. The music of the spheres is on the lips of creation and we either sing along, or we don't. Are we singing the praises of our creator? Or, are we singing the praises of ourselves? Aren't we beautiful, is the antithesis of the praise of God. We don't always see this point. We don't say God is nothing, but, like the devil, we say, we will be beautiful as God is, if we are not praising Him. He is worthy of all of the praises in the universe. We are in danger, the closer that we are to the worship of God. The temptation to syphon off a little of the praise and lavish it upon ourselves is our human condition. The devil did that and he will never return to his position. Praise God for the grace and mercy that we have received that our stumblings in this way, don't solidify our condition apart from His grace! Nature sings God's Glory! We sing the mighty power of God, that make the "mountains rise". We have access to God's mercy, through the sacrifice of Christ. It should make us more replete and lavish in our worship than the rest of creation. Oh, Halleluia! We get to sit between creation and the creator, to hear creation delight in His Glories and enter into the praise, as well.

Is it Father's Day yet? {from an essay on Sept 24,2010}

Our father on the earth...ie. Mr. Day {Life with Father}, Mr. Knight{my great grandmother's father} and everything in between

It is not polite what people call children who grow up without a father. I call them bereft, at the very least. Some men have impressed our culture to have them exemplified by their children who have risen and called them examples of what Christianity can lift men to aspire to live up to the ultimate example of God as Heavenly Father. Not just in America, but I love the ones exemplified in America, most. {but, of course, I am biased, in that American way.} The examples that I am considering came from the Cosby show, Life with Father, Cheaper by the Dozen and How Green was My Valley, Spencer's Mountain, Yours Mine and Ours, etc. My father's lifelong grief that he had to grow up without his father led me to look at what men personified fatherhood, to him and to me through him and why.

Since our culture is truly affected by the Judeo-Christian ethic and every good and perfect gift comes from the father of lights in whom is no variableness of turning, I think it is a blessing and unto gratitude and edification to consider the blessing of fatherhood throughout recent history as given to us in the remembrances of children who have been affected or infected by the grace of God in Christ, either directly as Christian children or indirectly, by being in the agreement of the American government that we have inherited.

Calling God our Father, in Heaven has a sacred intimacy that is, at times taken for granted or deemphasized. Jesus could have said, say "Our Heavenly Monarch", which would have had a certain denotation which is certainly appropriate. "Our Father" intimates that we have access to knowledge about God that people, unbought {by the blood of Jesus} have not.

The Day children, the Gilbraith's the Llewellyns, etc. were reared in a time that cherished the biblical example of fatherhood and shined it up and put it on a pedestal; Not the man, but the office, as was clear in their remembrances. Christianity in America and the known world had developed to a point where the role of father was not eaten up by the peer pressure of conformity to materialism. All of the other "isms", no less present then as now, were subservient to the family dynamic. War changed that for everybody and much of what Bill Cosby seemed to do in his expression of the contemporary, post war father, was pick up the pieces of fatherhood that war had shot to smytherines.

It is God's Bride the Church who has developed culture to the point where fatherhood is able to imitate God, to any degree, in any time period. God makes His Church long for what is the image of God on the earth and the battle lines are drawn for the Church to take up the gauntlet and fight.

I do pray that as we honor our fathers on fathers day. We will see and appreciate the love of Christ to give us such a concept of loving leadership. God give us the intelligence and skill to protect and project the real fatherhood that God is and rejoice that we have some part of fighting for the preservation of faithful fatherhood in our day. It is of your mercies that we are not consumed and Your image consumed from us. We have Your example God, to attempt to imitate. Bless our men to be emboldened to attempt the impossible, for the Glory of God. In Jesus' Name, Amen.