Our families give us life, our name, words to speak, and examples of how to act in the world. In receiving all of this from our families, it becomes quite clear to us, well into our adult years after we have left our childhood home, that we belong to our families. Even in those later years, our actions and accents still bear traces of those who bore our names before us. How fitting then that in describing the God from whom He comes, the Lord should name Him as ‘my Father’. A son can only be a son because he has received life from a father. And a father can only be a father because he has given life to a son. In belonging to one another, in relationship, they are who they are.
And so God seeks to give a People such a gift of belonging. He promises to Abraham concerning his descendants, “I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:8) God seeks to draw us into relationship with Him, and so sends the Son to lead us into being His sons and daughters. And so, God calls us to do as He does (even to the point of loving our enemies), to speak as He speaks in truth and compassion, to bear the name of Christian, and to live the life He gives us. God calls us to relish belonging to Him. May we indeed rejoice to see Him as Abraham rejoiced, knowing the God who is “I AM” and yet comes so close to us as to teach us with a human voice to pray, “Our Father.”