Further to my post about parental instincts and the things which harm the vulnerable, take a look at the following picture:
It’s a picture of Shaun Cunningham saving his son’s face from a high flying baseball bat. It’s gone viral on social media, being hailed as the “Dad-reflex” and “the most heroic play of the game.”
“Everyone else is moving away from the bat, except for the father, who is moving towards it. The picture is an echo of eternity, a shadow of the divine.”
Read more about it here.
For a more inspiration in “fathering up” or “mothering up” to your parental ferocity, take a look at this:
The natural reflects the supernatural, even if imperfectly.
Every Easter is an invitation to rediscover God’s Parental Ferocity. He uncompromising love which wrestled sin and death on The Cross, into the depths of hell and won.
“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.
He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering.”‘
John Stott
“Only in Jesus Christ do we have a God who loves us enough to suffers with us. They ridiculed Jesus while He was on The Cross. “He said others, let Him save Himself.” But with a heart of a parent, Jesus responded – I would rather die with my children than leave my children to die if I could save myself.”
Vince Vitale.