Lessons from fatherhood – V

Stains of fatherhood

Anyone who has been a parent, new parents included, can attest to the fact that feeding babies – infants and toddlers is a messy job. Part of the messyness includes getting stains on yourself. My baby girl, Charis Faith Joyance recently turned 1, having graduated from crawling to walking with support and now to walking freely (read running) has given her a greater sense of freedom albeit curbing our freedom.

I would like to highlight two features of feeding babies, first is the fact that they dirty themselves with food. Sometimes Faith will push away the spoon with her hand or shake her head side to side leading to spillage of food on herself. The second feature is that often times the parent who is feeding gets his/her dress stained too. When in a playful mood, at times Faith will take the contents of the spoon and rub it in her hands then she’ll rub it on my shirt or try to grasp my sleeve, soiling my shirt in the process. I’ve banana, cerelac and countless other stains on my formal shirts and trousers (not mentioning the home clothes), these stains even defeat the washing machine’s cleaning prowess! Sometimes I feel I need a bib more than my baby!

We as children of God, at times (read most of the times) want to have it our way (my will not thine be done) which leads us to stain our clothes, dirty ourselves. When we see the bigger picture, church as the bride of Christ, throughout history we’ve had a proclivity to stain ourselves much to the merriment of our accusers. Sometimes our actions even cause people to raise a finger at God (akin to us staining our Father’s robes). When we look at church as the body of Christ, we realise that our checkered collective history has done it’s part to stain the robes of Christ.

Where does this bring us to? Do my baby’s actions cause me to love her less? I may be angry, frustrated but for a moment, but none of this disqualifies her from her father’s love! When we stain ourselves and in turn stain the body of Christ, it does cause hurt to the Father’s heart, but does this cause Him to love us less?

There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!

Romans 8:39 TPT