Image of the Father

Lent is a good time to reflect upon how we see God and our image of God the Father.  How do we see our heavenly Father, as Santa Claus who gives us everything we ask for or the law giver who sees us only as children that need disciplined or maybe somewhere in between?  Do we really have a right image of God at all?

Our image can be one of our earthly Father and can be distorted translating to how we feel about God.  Often, we as humans do not see God for who he really is but, we will infer our own preconceptions based upon whether those experiences are good or bad.  There can be aspects we ascribe to God.

Right at the beginning of the Bible we are provided a partial image of who God is and how he sees things.  In Genesis 1, we see the story of creation where God is forming, out of nothing, everything we understand today in this world.  We see how God has a plan and in his plan is a concept of order for how he creates everything.  For some physicist, this is important.  As they study the universe, there is a common theme concerning order, almost too perfect.  Physicist Eugene Wigner confesses that the mathematical underpinning of nature “is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.” Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, “Why nature is mathematical is a mystery…The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.”

We also see how God sees everything as “good”.  God’s purpose is fulfilled in each step of the process and the outcome is very good.  In this story, God desires to be close to his creation.  In the story of man, he is there at every moment guiding man, but also allowing man the freedom to choose what he will call each new creature.  The relationship is wonderful.  God says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.”  That is important to grasp.  God wanted us to be created to be like himself.   If you or I were God, would we want that?  I think we might not want anyone to look like us or be close to what we looked like.

In all the stories in the old and new testaments, God reveals himself as love.  When you and I think about that, what does that say about God.  God’s very being is one of love.  He absolutely loves us and cares about us.  In his incarnation, God reveals this love, by giving his only Son, Jesus, to redeem us.  I remember when I first came to the Lord, I heard the Father for the very first time.  He told me, “Bruce, I have always loved you with an everlasting love that will never end.”  I felt such warmth and closeness when the Father spoke this to me.  I also remember my first experience of God when I was prayed over and wanted God in my life.  I felt so much love that for the first time, I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that God loved me just as I was.  This tells us God desires more than anything to be in a close personal relationship with each of us.  In 1 John 3:1, we read, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  Yet, so we are.  The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”  Wow!

Another aspect of God is that he is just in all his ways.  We may not always understand this.  Remember what Isaiah 55 says, “My ways are not your ways, says the Lord and my thoughts are not your thoughts.”  We tend to think of justice as his rules, laws, commandments, etc. that we must follow rigidly.  In fact, Jesus said in John 14:21, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.”  We must be careful to understand this.  Jesus lived obediently his Fathers will, but it was out of this relationship he had with his Father, wanting to do only the will of his Father.  It was not a burdensome thing to obey his Father’s will, it was a joy and desire.  When we allow God to transform us through love, we too want to grow even closer to the Father.  The Father wants us to have this same relationship he has with Jesus.  Jesus told Philip, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?”  That is a bit staggering to consider in our minds.   But God says, he gave as a first installment, the Holy Spirit (2 Corinth 1:22).  Jesus told us that he had to go, so the Holy Spirit would come.  The Holy Spirit, according to St. Pope John Paul II, “is the very essence of the love that exists between the Father and the Son.”  The Father knew, as part of our restoration, that we needed his Holy Spirit to bind us into this loving relationship.

Another image we see is that our Father is a holy God.  He wants what is best for us, because of his holiness. In Isaiah 6, we see the prophet in a vision of God and he hears the host of heaven say, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Host! All the earth is filled with his glory!”  Even God himself declares through Moses, “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy!”  The church teaches in the Catechism the following regarding holiness, “In order to reach perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ’s gift, so that … doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor.  Thus the holiness of the People of God will grow in fruitful abundance, as is clearly shown in the history of the Church through the lives of so many saints.” (CCC 2013). Again, the entire purpose and design of God is to grow in union with God through Jesus until we are just like Jesus.  In Romans 8:28, it says, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.”  God wants us to be free to follow him.

This work, the Catechism speaks about can only be accomplished by a relationship with God and the power of the Holy Spirit.  To become like Jesus, we must open our hearts and be conformed to his image.  It means being available to be used by God.  Remember the story of Cornelius.  He was a gentile, yet God spoke to him and to Peter, who came, even though up to that time, before God spoke to him, it was not proper for a Jew to associate with a gentile.  God showed Peter that he wants all to come to him and have a relationship and know and understand this image of love.  He says, in the story to affirm this truth, “To him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:43)  God wanted even Cornelius and his family to be a part of God’s kingdom.  This is what an image of God is like.

We may never have a complete image of God in this life, but God wants to keep drawing us closer to him.  He wants to reveal himself to us and allow us to experience him each day.  How do you see God?  Do you have a good image of what God is like?  Do you have a desire for others to have this image also? I hope and pray that in this time of prayer and reflection, you would allow God to draw you close to himself and reveal more of himself to you.