Fixing Go-Karts

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. I'm Sheridan Voisey and I've called our reading, Fixing Go-Carts. The garage of my childhood home holds many memories. On Saturday mornings, my dad would roll our car down the driveway so we had room to work, with my favourite project being a broken go-cart we'd found. On that garage floor, we gave it new wheels, attached a sporty plastic windshield and, with dad on the street looking out for traffic, I would race down the driveway with such excitement.

Looking back, I see more was going on in that garage than simply fixing go-carts. Instead, a young boy was being shaped by his dad and getting a glimpse of God in the process. Human beings have been patent on God's own nature. Human parenting has its origin in God too, for He is the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. Just as parents imitate God's life-giving abilities by bringing children into the world, when they nurture and protect their kids, they express qualities not sourced in themselves but in Father God. He's the model all parenting is based on. My father wasn't perfect. Like every father and mother, his parenting sometimes failed to imitate heavens.

But when it so often did imitate God, it gave me a glimpse of His own nurture and protection, right there, as we fixed go-carts on the garage floor. Today's scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter 3 verses 12 to 19. In Him, and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Let's pray. Father God, you are the source of all that is good and beautiful and true. And so we thank you today for being the perfect parent and the model of all great parenting. Would you help those of us who are parents today to nurture and protect our children well? And those of us without children, would you empower us to show interest and care to the people around us, giving everyone we come across a glimpse of your good fatherly nature? Because everything that is good and true and beautiful comes from you, including the most wonderful parenting on earth. We praise you for who you are. In Jesus' name. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.