5 September 2021 | Article by Russ Grinter

Father’s Day is a celebration day, like the other days we celebrate, we celebrate our Fathers, Dads.

Yet, for some of us, Father’s Day can bring sadness. For, like many things in this world, Father’s Day is an imperfect day.

There are things we love about Father’s Day, things we love about our Dads. I miss mine, as he lives over the border and I haven’t been able to hug him for a while.

But for you, it may be that your Dad is no longer with us, and so your sadness is more heartache, more than not looking forward to borders being open. 

 Some of us have great experiences with your Dad, I’ve got a great Dad. And then  if you’re like me you’ve noticed that he is your father who is still flawed. Even this, he has failed. 

I’m a father, and I have failed. And many men feel like failures. We live in a world that doesn’t deal with failure very well at all.

We hide our own failures, and hurl ridicule at others for theirs. We pretend to have it all together, and the veneer of that wears thin in lockdown life. We speak about others with slander, and say: “I’m just telling my story”. And all this is a summary of the situation our world sits in, we fail at love.

We lack love. For others, for our neighbour, for our friends, even for our family. We fail at the basic and beautiful of… love the God who made you, and love the people made in God’s image just like you.

Our world doesn’t give us the grace and space to admit, confess, get help and heal, of our failings.

And we feel this all the more on Father’s Day because we lack the space and grace to celebrate Father’s Day that really is for failures… and Jesus welcomes failures.

This Father’s Day, in lockdown we need this all the more as lockdown-life magnifies the feelings of failure. Father's Day is for failures, and let's be honest - that's all of us.

It's one of those days we celebrate as a society, and yet that celebration may be soured for some who haven't had good fathers.

It's a day where some men mourn that they aren't a dad.

It's a day where we can sometimes feel sadness in the sentiment as we measure our life's performance and self-worth on days like Father's Day.

Yet for us church, it's a day when we can take the opportunity to gaze into the fatherhood of God and find mercy and grace for failures - and celebrate something special God himself has given us.

So let’s pray, this Father’s Day…

Our Father in heaven, Father’s Day for us brings as many different experiences as there are as many different people in our church. 

For some of us Father’s Day is a moment in the year to replay the happy memories we’ve had with our Dad. Yet some of us haven’t got such happy memories of our father, and some of us have grown up not knowing our father at all. 

So what shall we say to these things? We will pray to you.

For us as God’s people, we are your children, you are our faithful Father in heaven who loves us deeply - this is what we can say today. And it is to our Father in heaven we pray. 

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for our fathers here on earth. Thank you for their love, leadership and self-sacrifice of service as they imitate you for our sake. 

Sovereign Lord, we know because of sin entering the world it is now our experience that our fathers are fallen, and fatherhood is faulty. But God, not forever.

Gracious God, we hear your voice in the Scriptures as you speak your promises to us about rescuing us from sin, death and judgement. 

You sent your Son into our world, the Lord Jesus Christ, to save us from our sin by His death for us on the cross and by his death defeating resurrection - we say thank you!

Thank you for your grace to us. Thank you that through faith in your Son our Saviour that we have been adopted as your children, that we are your sons and daughters. 

Thank you that your Holy Spirit bears witness that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God ad fellow heirs with Christ. 

Thank you Father that we have a new world to look forward to, where there are no more tears, with an inheritance where sin cannot strike and ruin. Thank you for the gospel of Jesus that changes everything, including Father’s Day.

So it is with thanks that we pray, we ask, show your grace to those who have lost their earthly fathers in this temporary world. 

Please show your grace to those who would like to be fathers but for some reason cannot be.

And show your grace to those who may have had a troubled relationship with their earthly father.

We pray that you would care for those in the various circumstances that people find themselves in when it comes to Father’s Day.

Heavenly Father, we pray this day, in the name of the One who has adopted us all into a new family forever, in Jesus name amen.