Our Young Heavenly Father

I was recently reading a friend's "25 Interesting Things About Me" list on Facebook when I was struck silent with awe at the thought he raised. Our Father is sinless, completely perfect in every way. The reason that we age and wrinkle and grow feeble and frail is because of the curse of sin; the unrelenting grip of our own evil. God has never sinned. The thought that struck me so deeply in my heart was realizing that due to His sinlessness and our sinfulness, our Father is younger and more youthful than we. As sin causes us to age and wither, His sinless beauty causes Him to remain as He has always been; young, youthful, sinless, strong...perfect. You've probably always imagined our Father as old with white hair and a long flowing beard. In your mental picture of God, do you see Him sitting contently on His throne, rarely rising from that perch? How mislead we have been! As we force ourselves from bed each day, the stress of yesterday is waiting to grab us once again. We are instantly in a fight for our lives and our enemy refuses to let up...and he plays dirty. He, Satan, has masterfully orchestrated a cunning plan to destroy God's most precious creation, His children. While we continue down the path of life that will eventually lead us to our grave and then to our Father, Satan waits. He slithers around like the stealthy snake depicted in the Garden of Eden, waiting for one of us to let down our guard, allowing him an opportunity to attack. He knows that we are too tired to fight back. Satan knows because he is the one who set that trap for us. He has set us up for a losing battle because he has caused us to overbook our lives with busyness, appointments, practices and meetings so that the last thing we think about doing is relaxing with our Father in prayer and Bible reading. He has caused us to separate ourselves from our source of strength and he has done it so skillfully that we don't even realize that we are the ones who have done it to ourselves. The life we demand to lead, the life that causes us to work more out of greed and sleep less because we have to keep up with the Joneses, is killing us, slowly. He knows that by causing each of us to sin and age, he causes our Father immense pain. We are the conduit through which Satan jabs his weak weapons at our Strong Tower. Can you, as a parent, image watching your child age past you? Your offspring losing the strength to run and jump and play while you still possess those abilities. Would you not do anything within your power to prevent that from happening? Any parent would. Our Parent did. He sent our Brother, Jesus Christ, to live a sinless life here on earth and then to sacrifice Himself on the cross, therefore breaking sin's death grip on us. All we have to do is accept it. Accept that sacrifice. Then, one day when our Dad takes us home to heaven, we will all be like Him; strong, young, sinless...perfect.