Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Unconditional Love Series

 

Genesis 1:27 “God created man in his own image.” 

 

Faith of our Fathers

 

The hymn “Faith of our Fathers” is a tribute to the fact that other generations have done remarkable things and because of the faith of those who have handed down our understanding we, too, will serve God in remarkable ways.

 

 

In the last many weeks I have worked on two portraits; one of my grandfather as a boy (left)) and the other of my father as a boy (right).   Both came from old photographs.   As I paint, I think about the person I am painting.   Painting the faces of the then little boys, I couldn’t help but wonder what made them into the men they became.   It also struck me that their experiences altered the course of my life.  

 

I had the opportunity to go to the home of William Wordsworth in England.  It was a beautiful house surrounded with colorful rhododendrons.  We read poems that he had written in the house and I read his poem, “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold.”  There is this incredible line that says, “the child is father of the man.”  How true that is. The child in my grandfather’s portrait became the man I so admired.   The child in my father’s portrait became my father.   The child I was became the man I am.   My children became the adults they are.   Someday my hoped-for grandchildren will, too, be adults.  

 

With both of these portraits, after the general shapes were drawn in, I began painting the eyes and then the faces around the eyes.   I’ve always heard “the eyes are the windows of the soul.”  In the hours it took to paint those portraits I wondered and pondered what molded these boys to become the men they were. 

 

I can never say how much it means to me to be a part of shaping a generation of people in our community.    Every time I teach Confirmation I wonder what will be the destiny of each confirmand.  It seems the greatest thing I can give to them is a faith that is beyond a faith in their own fathers or grandfathers, but a faith in our Father God.

 

There are many dimensions to God.  The dimension that Jesus spoke of when he referred to his God is Father.  He used that name, ‘Father’ in the Lord’s Prayer, at Gethsemane, and on the cross.   There are many aspects of God but the ideal of Father, loving and caring as embodied in the story of the Prodigal Son is a teaching inspiration.  The father who is searching and inspiring is a poignant picture of the composite of our Heavenly Father.  

 

Earthly fathers teach their children many things.  The greatest thing they ever give their children is faith in the Heavenly Father.   Faith of our fathers is a faith that emulates our Father in heaven.   There is more in life than just being human.  There is the ideal of emulating our Heavenly Father.  People can be more than the composite of family genetics.   We can be spiritually tethered to the image of God from which, in a greater sense than genetics, we had our origin.   It says in Genesis we were created in His image, the image of God.  May we live in his image and pass the faith of our Heavenly Father through the generations of fathers and parents who mold every successive generation. 

 

Prayer:

Dear God, help me to point to you and pass down your life.  Amen.