With great joy this afternoon I looked out my office window and watched a father helping his five (?) year-old little boy learn to ride a bicycle. With his helmet securely in place he mounted up ready to go. Sitting up straight the little guy started across the parking lot with dad right behind holding on to the back of the seat. Not once in the fifteen minutes or so, before the little guy was on his own, did I see the father knock him down. The father never yelled at him. He never aimed him at the curb. Quite to the contrary, dad was ever so close behind to grab him as he was falling.
Jesus once said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:11.
If I had seen the father deliberately tip over the bicycle I’m sure I would have immediately called social services. This child did not need to be in the care of such a father. So why is it so often we attribute horrible things to our heavenly Father? Probably not a week goes by that I do not hear someone in a back-handed kind of way blame God for some tragic event. We live in a world where bad things happen to everyone. We have a twenty-year-old student who just discovered she has leukemia. Do we really think this is God’s will? Surely a billion things a day happen on earth that are not God’s will. This world can be a rough place. What we do have is a Father who cares and hurts with us when we crash and fall.
Written by Roger Bothwell on October 27, 2009
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org