He sometimes plops himself on our bed like a walrus with no regard for the bodies already languishing there. He doesn’t say much, so I run my fingers through my son’s hair and suddenly sense God my Father behind me, running His fingers through my hair. When Jai plays basketball I pray to God that he will score, and he does! Almost immediately I feel my Father beside me cheering silently, wishing above all else for me to succeed in life.
We often meet in the kitchen after school. She sensitively inquires after the weight of my day, I suspect to gauge the evening’s depth of brooding. And because I am aware of this, I deliberately if not unconvincingly make light the load because of my Father’s hand on my shoulder, filling my filament with firmament as He exfoliates the day’s turmoil and anxiety for the sake of my daughter, if not for me. Never having missed a single evening I am delightfully diligent and uncompromising with my good-night kisses, as is she, only because not a day ends without imagining my own Father’s kisses on my neck as I lie in bed with my eyes already shut.
The gospel of grace is both such a beautiful and brutal epiphany, that we should be reconciled to God by hammering a spike through His Son’s broken flesh remains staggering… and yet his crucifixion belongs in an amusement park… if the one thing that it came to reveal is not seen nor grasped…
The Father’s Love.
I ask my son how he knows I love him. “All the stuff you buy me, nudge-nudge wink-wink” he laughs. And then; “because you pay attention and you show affection.” I am attentive. How do I know God loves me like a son? Because He has written His love in stone and in blood. He’s provided me all my practical needs. I lack nothing essential and yet… why isn’t it enough? Have I not been paying attention to my desires? Why is it that even though I bask in my own family’s love, even my own faith community’s concerns, I still walk these days lonely, not only frustrated by my feeble reciprocal responses, but most especially those long periods of desert silence where I’m left fruitlessly imagining the futility of the impossible – to reject Him so I can wrench and wrest His compassionate heart. But He will not be tested and I will not hurt Him. God’s attentive… but where is His affection?
I read the parable of prodigal son over and over again, as spoken by the Father’s Son, to look for His legs, arms, the kisses, the robe, ring, sandals and the feast… and find them absent. Perhaps because though sinful, I was never lost? So I look to the elder son and wonder if I’ve spent enough time laying claim to Dad’s possessions. But after a short muse I realize that His stuff is far less important to what it is I really want.
The Father’s love I know is here. Somewhere. I know His love is in our emissary Jesus Christ now in us. If I understand and am bathed in it, why does it no longer satisfy? He tells me I’m His child and I believe it, and yet I still feel and behave like an orphan, like feral Oliver Twist himself with my battered plate in my grubby knitted knotted fingers before the authorities pleading for more. I want more of Dad. Please can I have more of Dad? My eyes must have turned to glass because the gospel of grace has over-promised and under-delivered.
Then came the morning I bowed my head and broke, shoving onto the stage the actor with his well-versed soliloquy, but instead he uttered a single stentorian groan. The Bible says the Holy Spirit will make intercession for us and so He did. I heard His voice, clearly addressing the Father on my behalf when I could no longer speak. “Can you not see that Stephen is pining for you? Reward him!” There was more and I wrote it afterward on wet glass, but in short He petitioned for deeper intimacy and greater purpose on my behalf. I thanked Him and moved into the day somewhat stupefied.
The word he used was ‘pine’.
‘Pine’ because there is still this great rabid raging river between us. ‘Pining’ is a long wait in the departure lounge next to a wind sock. One can only take so much elevator music and numbing circuits down the duty-free corridor, counting tin with its distant din along the conveyor belt trajectory as they are all invariably and enviably vacuumed up into the taut taunt of heaven, those floating marshmallow fields above.
With Josh Garrels’ ‘At My Table’ funnelling through my ears and pummelling my heart I stare up at my gate number, shifting my misty half-masts to the word ‘delayed’ beside my flight number, and think of the gospel. “Sinner saved”, satiated in cheap King’s Cross Soho neon, for which I am indeed ingratiated for being appreciated, but even though my depreciation’s now in reverse – ‘my cancer in remission because I am forgiven’ as the song goes – I remain wrapped in this warped rebellion that the gospel means squat without the love of the Father, and the love of the Father means nothing without knowing and experiencing the Father Himself on a very deep, intimate and personable level.
He is the One I crave. The oasis among the mirages, the glacier below the glare. It is Him I desire and long for. Him in close proximity, His company, His voice, His reflections and warmth, His breath and breathing, but above all… His fingers for real… in my hair.
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