Is God Only Father?

Just because we can picture God as Mother (see yesterday’s devotional), it’s not actually wrong for God to be pictured as Father.

In fact, Jesus was breaking all kinds of religious tradition by calling God “Father” and “Daddy.” That was not the accepted way to speak of God. There was a cost to breaking with the traditional way of referring to God: at one point scripture says, “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father” (John 5:18).

But we miss the point if we think Jesus was simply replacing one religious tradition for another - moving from “God Most Hight” to “Father.” Jesus wasn’t laying down some new ‘law’ about how to refer to God. For one, Jesus was initiating a whole new way of relating to God - intimate, caring, close. And more than that, Jesus was inviting us to re-imagine the way we see God so that we could grow closer to God. Jesus was inviting us to imitate him by finding new ways to name God!

What do you call God? What images are most common for you? Are they helpful? Might there be other, less traditional images or names for God that might help you draw closer?