Daddy on my mind

Yesterday was unusually humid here in Ireland, the temperatures were up but not unreasonably high, but the humidity, that was another story. The air was so pregnant with moisture that it literally seemed to woddle about threatening to give birth to a cloudburst at any moment but failing to do so. The heat exhausted Iris and I all day, slowing us down to a snails pace whenever we tried to achieve even the most straight forward tasks. Finally just before 9 pm we got out of the house and drove down to the seafront. We walked along the path beside the sea overlooking Belfast Lough and sat on a favourite seat that has been a particular favourite of ours for nearly forty years. No that’s not a typing error I did say forty years.

As we sat watching a few ships and small boats either arriving into the Lough, or, like the Liverpool ferry, set out to sea, we found ourselves praying. We prayed for an increased awareness of God’s presence, particularly for a manifestation of His glory. The manifestation was, I need to say, the result of yours truly being his usual dramatic self. We sat there for ages before we made our way back home. There had been no major appearances of angles, or heavenly lights, rather a real sense of stillness and peace and natural beauty, interrupted at times by a friendly greeting of several people as they passed by.

These days we both of us would admit to expressing a need to experience or heavenly Father as or loving Daddy, not just a loving trustworthy patriarch, who organises things for our good from a lofty distance. I recently saw one of our lovely grandchildren Beth, being lifted by her dad (our son Chris), she was still half asleep, but as she realised his touch, a gentle warm smile burst across her face and she snuggled in for a cuddle. Wouldn’t that just be perfect relationship to experience with our real Dad?

A week or so ago a friend came to our fellowship with a picture she had drawn. It was a Middle Eastern Sheppard and he had a lamb across his shoulders. The lamb looked secure and confident from this vantage point, and seemed quite content to stay there. As she left my friend gave Iris the picture to pass on to me, with the comment that this is how she saw my relationship with God. Again I’m praying for the reality of this picture to be manifest in my life. I pray that we all should be in such a place, because He loves us all equally.