The Hebrew scriptures do not generally mention God as Father. They use a variety of less personal metaphors to describe their experiences of God: rock, castle/tower, stronghold, hiding place, light, governor, lord/master, king, judge, warrior, creator, savior, shepherd, Holy One, for example. We find a few intimate references such as where the prophet Hosea recognized God as husband of the people of Israel and the Song of Songs, sometimes considered a love song between God and the people. In one of the psalms (103:13), however, the psalmist notes: “As a father cares for his children, so the Lord cares for those who fear him,” not impersonal, distant, transcendent, but present, available, caring and responsive, imminent.

That seems to be the God that Jesus knew most intimately. Throughout the gospels, but especially in John, Jesus continually referred to God as the Father. Abba, Daddy, Father, he addressed God, and he opened the way to that kind of personal relationship with the Holy One to us. He taught us to pray, “Our Father” (Mt.6:9-13, Lk.11:2-4), claiming our joint relationship as sons and daughters of God each time we utter the prayer whether silently in our hearts or aloud, alone or with others. Jesus used the parable of the Prodigal Son to show us what God’s fatherly love is like: generous, merciful, forgiving, unconditional, whether we are near or far away. And as the risen Christ prepared his followers for his departure, he made our common relationship perfectly clear: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (Jn.20:17)

For those whose fathers were absent or abusive or cold or any other of a thousand negative and hurtful things, thinking of God as father can be a problem. It’s important for us, each and all, to remember that we can’t contain God with our thoughts, our words. Whenever we try to circumscribe God with our anthropomorphizing, we find that, as the title of J.B. Phillips’ book proclaims, Your God Is Too Small. God is both boundless, “more than mind can think, more than heart can feel” is how the mystic and liberation theologian Howard Thurman expresses that concept, and yet present, always reaching out to us, where we are, as we are, to reveal God’s Being of Love to us in a way that we can accept, that touches our hearts, that awakens our love.