As much as we dearly love and honor all the wonderful mothers in our lives, it’s barely been a month after surviving the challenge of Mother’s Day, and our overwhelmed lives are confronted with yet another demand for some significant indication of parental appreciation! Now we have to think up something we can do for Dad that’s meaningful, affordable, available on Amazon Prime – and will make him think we’re the most sensitive, caring, insightful son or daughter any father could ever hope to have. Let’s face it – that’s a tall order, so let me get at least one important thing out of the way first. Sadly, I can’t help you with any of that.

I have no suggestions for last minute gifts or special Father’s Day celebrations, but you don’t need that anyway. There are gazillions of web pages already doing that, and some may even include some innovative, new yoga positions to help relieve that awful headache you get from trying to wade through all the ads and finally make a decision. What I would like to do, instead, is to suggest a way to enhance our Father’s Day reflections by looking at it through the lens of a simple admonition from God. But first, let me insert a personal note to preface that discussion . . .

The Search Begins ~
Many who know me are aware that I struggled with the whole “father” issue for most of my life. I never met my biological father and grew up knowing virtually nothing about him beyond his name. Questions about him were brushed aside with no clear answers, and open discussions about him were neither invited nor permitted. The subject of my father was an informational “black hole,” and I wrestled with the implications of that void on several levels. The mystery haunted me throughout my developmental years and followed me into my adult life. Finally, a few years ago, my aunt sent me a tiny little picture of my father. Prior to that, I had never seen his face and that picture stirred up every longing I ever had to know who he really was, where he was, and what happened to him after I was born. That, and a few other incidents, inspired my wife and me to seriously undertake a mission to “find” my father.

Years of work and untold hours of research, coupled with several episodes of divine intervention and my wife’s continual encouragement and dogged determination, eventually paid off. We discovered family members that we never knew existed and developed relationships that have become priceless. When I think about my father now, it isn’t just a black hole in my mind and heart anymore. Even though I didn’t get to meet him face-to-face, I learned a lot about him and about the family I never knew I had. The picture was the beginning. Finally, I got to “see” him in a way I had never been able to do previously, and in many ways, I see myself differently because of it. Fathers can have that effect on you, even if you never got to meet them face-to-face.

But as powerful as the impact of knowing about him was for me, some vital elements were still missing. He established his fatherhood for me, but that’s about all he was ever able to do. I got his last name and some of his DNA, but he never had the opportunity to offer much else. Whatever love he may have had was never able to find its way to me. Unknown to my mom and anyone else in our family, he was killed in a tragic accident when I was still a toddler, so there were no expressions of “anything” from him. Being called his child didn’t mean much, since I had no idea who he really was.

A Father with No Failures ~
But then someone introduced me to Jesus Christ, and I discovered a Father with no failures, the One who could fulfill every dream any child could ever hope to receive from a father. Being this Father’s child clears up every imperfection left by every imperfect human father we may have had and enhances every loving expression ever offered by a dad to his son or daughter. He is the Father most deserving of our attention, our honor, and our sacrificial love this Father’s Day . . . and there are a couple of words we rarely hear anymore that might help us to do that. The words are “behold” and “bestowed,” and John uses both of them in revealing the most profound truth about fatherhood we will ever hear.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3:1-2 (NKJV)

A Lesson in Beholding ~
My personal journey to find my father began with a little faded black and white picture. When I got it, I didn’t just “look” at it. I held it in my hands and pondered it. That picture represented a partial answer to so many questions. I wanted to crawl inside it. I scrutinized every detail. We sent it to a lab and had it enlarged and restored. We added color to it. I gazed at it with wonder, and with more than just my eyes. I did with it what God intends us to do when He uses the word “behold.”

God invites us to behold the kind of love it took to devise a way to transform flawed, rebellious, self-centered, and hopeless sinners — a way that would pay the awful price required to grant us a new birth and bring us into His family. This is not just a lesson in theology. It’s the profound revelation of a deeply personal, eternal, and unchangeable relationship that comes with benefits that are incomprehensible, and all that’s included in that relationship is “bestowed,” not earned, not deserved, not achieved by any merit or effort on our part.

What if on this Father’s Day we included some time to heed God’s admonition to really behold the love that He bestowed upon us? What if we looked at it, studied it, and pondered it with more than our eyes? What if we took seriously what it really means to be called the children of God? Maybe in doing that, love would come full circle – not only expressed in the gifts we give our fathers, but in unbounded praise for “all” the Father has given us.

And now, on this Father’s Day 2025, may we set aside time to praise Him again and ponder the wonder of His gift . . .

“Behold what manner of love the “Father” has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1 John 3:1-2

“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below.  Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .

• • • Our Heavenly Father is the “Father with no failures, the One who fulfills every dream any child could ever hope to receive from a father.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
    • Being this Father’s child clears up every imperfection left by every imperfect human father we may have had and enhances every loving expression ever offered by a dad to his son or daughter. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)  
    • He is the Father most deserving of our attention, our honor, and our sacrificial love this Father’s Day . . . “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1 John 3:1-2 @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • God invites us to behold the kind of love it took to devise a way to transform flawed, rebellious, self-centered, and hopeless sinners — a way that would pay the awful price required to grant us a new birth and bring us into His family. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)

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