Genesis 44:30

A Father's Heart

His life is bound up in the lad's life. Genesis 44:30.

“My Father!” You speak the words carelessly. You never think what they really mean. To you “father” is perhaps the one who is at the head of things, the one who goes to work all day and comes home tired at night, the one who is the head of the house and whose word is law. You love him, but you are just a little afraid of him. You feel you don't know him so well as you know your mother. If you are in trouble it is to her, not to him, that you go.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule. There are some of you to whom the word “father” is just another way of spelling the word “love.” The bond that unites you is so close that you feel your father is more to you and you are more to your father than words can ever tell. But I am not speaking of the exceptions today. I am speaking of the general rule. And the general rule is that there is for you a touch of fear and mystery in your love for your father.

You have heard of Carlyle, the great writer? He was a man who lived to learn, and to think; for his greatest joy in life was getting to know things. As a boy Thomas Carlyle had a father whom he feared, a father of whom indeed the whole family were afraid. You would have been afraid of him too. But, all the time, the Carlyle family honored their father above any man in the whole world. And when Thomas Carlyle became a man he learnt to love him too. The great philosopher realized that, in a mysterious way, his father's life was knit to his.

After his father's death, Carlyle wrote “My early, yet not my earliest recollections of my father, had in them a certain awe; which only now, or very lately, has passed into reverence.... All that belongs to him has become very precious to me.... I can remember his carrying me across Mein Water.... Perhaps I was in my fifth year.... It was the loveliest summer evening I recollect.... He lifted me against his thigh with his right hand, and walked carelessly along till we were over. My face was turned downwards. I looked into the water and its reflected skies, with terror yet with confidence that he could save me.”

When you grow older you will wonder at the strange things you will find out about people. You will one day make discoveries about your own father.

The other day I read a story of how a little girl discovered her father. She was the daughter of a famous French painter. Though she had lived with her father all her life she had never really seen him, for she had lost her sight when she was a baby. But she loved him very dearly, and he was her constant companion, for her mother was dead.

One day a clever doctor saw the child and said that he could cure her blindness by performing an operation. How happy and excited the little girl was at the thought of being able to see! And what made her happiest was the thought that at last she would look upon her father. When the operation was successfully over and the bandages were removed from her eyes, she ran to him and looked up trembling in his face. Then she shut her eyes and felt his face all over with her little fingers to make sure it was that of her loved companion. Then she opened her eyes again and gazed and gazed, and then, holding him tightly by the hand, she cried, “Only to think I had this splendid father so many years, and never knew him!”

Boys and girls, you may have known as little about your father's heart as that little girl did about her father's face. You may one day discover its love as the blind child discovered her father's features. The love is there; for the story of our text the story of Jacob's love for his son Benjamin is the story of how most fathers love their children, though their children may grow up and never suspect it. Your father's life, boys and girls, is bound up in your life.

But you have a Father in Heaven as well as a father on earth, and the same is equally true of Him. We know that because Jesus came to earth to tell us so. Till Jesus came men feared God as much as they loved Him. They did not know Him properly. But Jesus came to discover the Father, to show to man God's great warm heart beating with love for all His children.

And since then men have found it easy to love God because they know Christ and God are One.

So never be afraid of your Heavenly Father. He loves you more tenderly than the most tender human father. He understands and sympathizes with all your troubles and difficulties. He is always waiting to comfort and help you. Boys and girls the sooner the better discover Him.