The word father is not a small word. For many it calls up the warmest of memories, a strong hand, a steady voice, a love that asked for nothing in return. For others it carries an ache, the memory of a father who was absent, or harsh, or gone too soon. The Lord knows both. And in His kindness He takes the tenderest love we know upon the earth, the pity of a father for his own child, and uses it to teach us something of His own heart toward us.

David could have chosen any picture to describe the mercy of God. He chose this one, like as a father pitieth his children.Think of a father bending over a child who is hurt or afraid. He does not stand off and demand that the child compose himself. He stoops. He gathers the little one up. His heart is moved. And David says that this is but a faint shadow of the compassion of the LORD toward them that fear Him. If an earthly father, with all his weakness, can love like that, how much more the Father who made heaven and earth.

This sets a high calling before every man who bears the name of father. The charge given to fathers in the Scriptures is a holy one, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is not enough to provide bread for the table and a roof overhead, needful as those things are. The father is given to point his children to God, to teach them the Scriptures, to pray with them and for them, and to show them, in his own walk, what it is to fear and to follow the Saviour. There is no greater honour a man can have, and no weightier trust.

Yet every earthly father knows that he falls short of it. The best of fathers is a sinner still, and the most faithful must own his failures. That is why the heart, in the end, must look higher than any man. The Lord Jesus gave us the most beautiful picture of fatherhood that was ever drawn, in the father of the prodigal son. While the wayward boy was yet a great way off, the father saw him, for he had been watching the road, and he ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. That running father is the heart of God toward every sinner who turns toward home. He does not wait with folded arms. He runs.

And for any who never knew such a father, or who carry the wound of a father who failed them, the Scripture holds out a promise that has comforted many a heart, a father of the fatherless… is God in his holy habitation. No one is beyond the reach of His fatherly care. Where an earthly father was absent, the Father in heaven draws near. Where an earthly father failed, the Father in heaven never fails.

So let us honour our fathers, the good gifts that they are, and let us pray for those who carry the calling, that they would fulfil it in the strength of God. But above all, let us lift our eyes to the Father of whom every earthly father is only a shadow, and rest in His unfailing pity, like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.