Yesterday my two year old boy was running ahead of me. He surprised me when we approached the crest of a steep decent and he stopped and reached out his hand to me. This is surprising because his most frequently used phrase is, “No, me, self!” He is Mr. Self-Reliance and is impervious to the fears normal people would reasonably have in situations such as this.
I realized something though as he reached out his hand to me and that is just how grateful I was having it. I recognized how amazing it is to hold a tiny hand and how I wanted nothing more than his safety and well being. Reaching out is the key here; his reaching out caused me to reach out to him physically, sure, but more than that I reached out to him within myself, extending my empathy, my protection, my love.
I was able to appreciate this as a frail and fallen human father; I cannot begin to fathom how God the Father, the model upon which all fatherhood is modeled, experiences the instance we reach out to him. We, like my son, often only do this when the danger seems so immanent that even we recognize it. I long for my son’s hand always.
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