The Heart Of A Father

Welcome back to Dude’s Week. Admittedly I have no clue what its like to be a father. But I do know what it is like to be surrounded by great ones: my own dad, my husband, my uncle, my business partner, my son’s godfather, my friends’ husbands. Man, as I write this, I see that I like to surround myself with good men. Good move on my part.

Today’s Biblical character study involves my good friend, David. David was a good man but he was far from perfect. Notice I did not say the guys I mentioned above were perfect. David starts off life well. He is chosen to be king but he plays his cards smart while he waits for that to unfold. We are going to fast forward in his life to the point where he is living life large. He is hanging out on the roof of his palace when he should have been in battle like the other kings. He has the best of everything and he is bored….so he takes what isn’t his, Bathsheba. They have a child together who dies. Sin always has consequences. But the consequences don’t end there. For a while it seems they have recovered. They proceed to have a son, Solomon, the Wise One.

We need to look deeper to see what happened because of David’s sin. His family fractured. I’m sure many of us can relate. His children don’t get along with each other. One son actually rapes his daughter. His son Absalom will be our focus today.

Absalom wants his dad’s throne. In fact he gives David quite a run for his money. But David has a father’s heart. He orders his men not to kill his son for any reason. Absalom winds up dead and we have some of the most gut wrenching words of Scripture in the lines that follow. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! Would I have died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” “ 2 Samuel 18:33

As I said before I have no idea how a father loves. But in this brief passage I think I catch a glimpse. I see a powerful man with the world seemingly at his command, reduced to his knees in grief over a child. In his case the child was dead. In yours it might be estranged, in sin, sick or whatever. The pain is real. And David’s pain is raw. In that sentence I can begin to see how a father loves…. mightily yet he cannot fix everything. The King is reduced to his knees on behalf of his son.

Scripture tells us that David had a heart like God’s. To me, that means a father’s heart. In David we see a man who made some pretty bad choices and some great ones. But he never stopped loving God. He loved his children with abandon and they broke his heart. Yep, sounds like a heart like God’s to me.

For all you dads out there…love your children even though they can and will break your heart. When you feel like giving up think of David and his broken heart and love like him.