I’ve come to accept that I am probably never going to meet my father. I know that I am probably never going to shake my father’s hand—or give him the most awkward hug in history. I am never going to get to ask him the questions I’ve been wanting to ask since I was old enough to have questions. I am never going to see his face. I am never going to hear the voice that supposedly sounds so much like mine. I am never going to get to ask him for advice. And if I marry a lady and father children one day, they are probably never going to get to meet him too. In fact, I don’t even know if he is still alive.
My father abandoned my mother—his wife at the time, my older brother, and me in Ghana when I was a few months old. Apparently overwhelmed by financial difficulties, especially after my birth, he deserted the family for Nigeria, where he started a new family.
At around 4 years old, I realized that unlike most of my classmates, I only had one parent. Naturally, I began peppering my mother with questions about when my father was finally coming home. And on my first day in Canada, I asked the first Ghanaian man I met, “are you my father?” I am now a man, however. I have stopped asking questions—at least audibly.
Admittedly, when people ask me questions about my father, I tend to immediately put on a front that I do not at times find myself thinking about him. I’ve always maintained that I do not miss him, and that’s the truth. I cannot miss someone I’ve never met. Still, I think about him sometimes, wondering if he ever thinks about me in return.
If this sounds like an invitation into a lavish pity-party, I assure you that’s not the case. When I was still a boy, my mother once advised me that I should think about her faithfulness toward me; that I should think about all her sacrifices for me, and consider them as virtually nothing in comparison to God’s faithfulness toward His children. So this Father’s Day, my thoughts will be captive, not to David Sey’s faithlessness, but to God’s faithfulness toward me.
God’s faithfulness is precious to me, not merely because of my father’s faithlessness, but because of my own faithlessness toward God. Because of my sins, I am “by nature [a child] of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:3). Therefore, I am not, by nature, a child of God (Romans 9:8). I am a sinner, and I am deserving of the consequences thereof. I do not have an inheritance to a home in Heaven. Instead, I am deserving of Hell.
But in Galatians 4:3-7, the apostle Paul writes:
when we were children, [we] were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
God does not merely save sinners from Hell; He is not just the Saviour of sinners. He is also the Father of redeemed sinners. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God the Father, miraculously became a man through a virgin birth by a woman named Mary. Then, being fully God and fully man, He lived a sinless life—never disobeying His Father’s commandments, and willingly sacrificed Himself on a cross, taking our sinful record on Himself and giving those who would believe and follow Him His righteous record, and enabling sinners to identify ourselves with Him, so that upon suffering the wrath of God the Father to the point of His death, and resurrecting three days later; sinners would be declared righteous on Christ’s account, and saved from the wrath of God in Hell.
Incredibly, the good news doesn’t end there. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection for sinners, those who are justified by Christ; those who identify with the Son of God, are also adopted as children of God.
I am probably never going to meet my biological father. Not in this world, and probably not in the world to come. I am probably never going to get the opportunity to ask him the questions I’ve had for years. However, one day, in Heaven, I will get to see my God face-to-face, and I will have an eternity to thank Him for adopting me, a sinner, as His son.