As a small boy my sister once sent me to the local shop to buy a bottle of blue ink, which I carried home in a paper bag. As I walked up the path to my house the bag ripped and the bottle fell and smashed on the path leaving a large blue stain. Mum was at home and such was the fear that we had of how angry she would be, that my siblings and I hatched a plan to conceal what I had done. A loud radio masked the sound of a bucket being filled with hot soapy water, and while I ran to the shop to buy another bottle of ink, my brother and sister scrubbed the path clean. To our huge relief the plan worked and mum never knew what I had done.
Such experiences in childhood shaped my heart’s view of what a parent was like, and when in later life I came to think about God being a Heavenly Father, my heart assumed that He would be the same as my mum. I was filled with fear and apprehension of how He would view the mistakes that I had made. But I was wrong and over many years my heart has slowly caught up with the truth of God’s nature revealed in the Bible – a loving Father who is endlessly patient, kind and forgiving.
