Abba: Worship Wednesdays

Galatians 4:6                          Mark 14:36               Romans 8:15

 “Abba!  Daddy!  Father!  Oh, how my spirit wraps itself around that unspeakably warm and touchable name!  You are who you are.  You are not as the fathers I’ve known or the ones I will know about.  None can compare to your matchless, flawless self.  There is no way to compare you with human fathers.  Does the sun compare to a match?

 You ride the winds for entertainment.  You dabble in the oceans and spin the earth on its’ axis and lift the sun and juggle the stars.  You cast the rainbow and stride the clouds and call the seasons out from their hiding places.  There is nowhere your voice is not heard.

 You spoke and commanded a universe and more into being.  You speak now, and nations shift and powers bend.  You pull fruit from blossoms and snow from clouds and toss thunder from shrouded darkness.  You “get little” and take our pulse and patch our hurts and plan our trips and pay our fares.

 You hold our pain, erase our fears, soothe our worst selves and blot unruly tears.  You are a safe place to tell our truths and confess our sins and ask for help. We need wisdom and  ask with a certainty we will not be harshly judged for asking.

 Like a human father?  Oh no.  Never!  Just “not”.     We can run to you and confide our angry and blistered truths and confess our tattered sins and get great helpings of forgiveness and be set back up on our trembling feet.  We can count on you, believe in you, rest in you, and trust you in a stretched-out eternity that lies ahead. 

 You don’t invade our space, but you do come when invited.  Your love is personal, perpetual, and purposeful.  You’re always about the business of reshaping us inside ourselves and seeing that our spirits grow younger and stronger even while the body wails under the weight of humanity.

 Abba!  It’s the sweetest name we will ever know!  And you’re just the same as your lovely name. 

 Of fathers, I’ve had two plus two, fathers and fathers-in-law.  Good men, all. But men.  Grounded-in-earth men and mightily flawed like me.  I don’t hold their feet  to your fire.

 Oh, there have been names I’ve longed to hear.  But never has there been a name so dear, to this heart of mine, as the name divine.  The precious, bejeweled name: Abba.

Linda Andersen

What name of God ushers you into worship?