Who's Your Daddy?

So yesterday my son lost his first tooth. I’ve never seen a boy so excited. He’s not big on the whole pain and blood thing, but he did great. He wanted me to yank the thing out. Here’s the thing though: I couldn’t remember how to pull a loose tooth. I know that sounds stupid, but as I was thinking about it it’s probably been 20 years since I’ve had to do it. And that was my own tooth, not someone else’s. So last night was another “dad right of passage”. It’s one of those things they never think to teach you in school. Sure they tell you where babies come from, and make you and some random girl carry around an “egg baby” for a school day, but they never think to say “Oh, and one day your kids will have a loose tooth, this is what you do . . .” Anyway, after about an 30 minutes of trying various methods to get the tooth out (yanking, string, tweezers, I couldn’t find my needle nose pliers) we finally just wiggled it enough that it came out. And there stood my son, with a huge bloody smile. Its times like these that make me question my adequacy as a father. There’s so much stuff you seem to have to do and know, and nobody ever thinks to sit down and tell you how to do the stuff. You kind of just learn on the fly, doing the best you can. In service Sunday we talked about God as Abba or “daddy”. It really hit me Sunday as Jason was speaking and I watched the Mailbox video what a loving Abba I have; an Abba who has all the right answers, who knows how to do everything. How different would I live my life if I truly trusted, talked to and listened to my Abba? My son put his trust and faigh in me when it came to his tooth. From time to time he had a look of fear and pain in his face, but he stood there, trusting his daddy to take care of him. And in the end we go the tooth out and he got $3 under his pillow. Jesus calls us to have the simple faith of a child. Adults get so muddled down in making God complex. He’s really not. Do we ever get to the point that we put our trust in God like my son put in me? Like my son had faith in me, I hope to one day always have that same kind of faith in God. More importantly, I hope my son takes the faith he has in his screwed up earthly dad, and have that same faith in his Abba.