Now is an interesting time (and as good as any) to analyze this #FatherSonDynamic I find myself in. When Josiah was around 3 years old, I remember Quiana having to ease his little heart after I would correct him because he didn’t think I would love him anymore after he’d done something wrong. Admittedly, my correction can be intense so I took great measures to talk to him directly to tell and show him that I would always love him no matter how the chastening felt in the moment . I’ve told my children to always remember that at the highest heights of my displeasure with something wrong they’ve done, my love for them will ALWAYS be higher.
Now that he’s less than a year away from being a teenager, the shoe has flipped onto the other foot. I had to address him today in such a way that it made ME wonder (if I continue to mold him as only a father into the man of God he’s destined to be) if I could ever push him too far that he wouldn’t come back to me or even God, for that matter. When I reminded him of how he was as a toddler and confessed similar, albeit fleeting, concerns about driving him away, he didn’t utter a word. He just continued helping me put together this puzzle we’ve been working on as a family.
Jesus had a similar type of feeling around this time about 2000 years ago. The stench of the world’s sins which was on His shoulders was so offensive that He couldn’t even feel His Father’s presence as He exclaimed “My God, My God – why have you forsaken Me?” I imagine once He brushed His shoulders off and ascended sit at the right hand of God the Father, that He was able to rest assured again; with the sins of the world absolved and His relationship with His Daddy eternally mended – never to be interrupted again. From the father’s side of things, I imagine the God the Father was relieved to see Jesus return as He knew He would. Even in the small and temporary moments when that #FatherSon bond is broken, it can make any father feel disconnected from his begotten son(s).
Thank you, Jesus – for continuing to work with Abba to piece together this fragmented world after He punished YOU for OUR sins!
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” – Hebrews 12:6-9
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Separation Anxiety
As I gain age, I also gain a better understanding
Of the sacrifice Christ made to take me unto His family.
God became one with humanity to subdue the calamity of our own undoing.
Before withstanding the agony of the guardsmen,
Jesus had to handle His Father abandoning Him in the Agony of the Garden…
For as the sins of the world were cast upon Him, God disowned His Son’s unity.
Never before had I fully grasped the concept
Of why Jesus felt so drastically discarded –
He was in His truest human form at the garden of Gethsemane.
Neither Peter the believer nor Zebedee’s sons
Could help ease the beleaguered fever that death’s remedy hung…
As death’s enemy, The Son was eclipsed by the darkness of death’s synergy.
Matthew 26:37-38
I never quite grasped Jesus’ desperation
Nor did I get why He asked what He asked with such resignation.
You can feel the hesitation as He voiced concerns that the Father couldn’t hear.
As He left His post to cleanse a leper nation,
He was being choked by sin’s respiration…
Though this was His destination – it was never written that He couldn’t fear.
In life, Jesus was never further than words from God’s presence
Until He was burdened with the spurn of our bodily infection.
Departed from this essence, He asked for the malice of this chalice to pass Him.
Yet facing such overwhelming sin-sations,
He fulfilled God’s Will by taking in our sins to be chastened…
To Him, we should hasten – for He tasted a palate of callous with true Passion.
Mark 14:36
Like a child torn from its mother by the clutches of slavery,
What Jesus bore asunder must’ve mustered much bravery.
For our shame, He was cleaved – He took the rap with abandonment issues.
No one handed Him tissues – His insightful peers kept falling asleep.
In the time they managed to misuse – eyeful tears kept falling from His cheeks…
And though we lost His esteem – He got it back wrapped in Abba’s hands and epistles.
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‘He took with Him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” ’
– Mark 14:33-34
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