GOD, our Parent

July 27, 2025 – 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072725.cfm)

We come to know God as creator. We believe that He creates and still creating everything in the world. We affirm that He creates and wills everything that happens and happening in life. But what kind of creator God is? How do we view and consider Him as our creator?

Too often, God is regarded as a Builder God, who plans, schemes, designs, engineers, produces, reproduces, develops, improves and maintains all creatures and creation. In other words, he is a single-minded creator who straightforwardly constructs towards the achievement of His objectives and the realization of the finished-product. Meaning, if God say something will happen or will something to happen, it will happen no matter what. 

While this idea have some basis in the Bible, it can be taken to extremes and lead to a fatalistic view of life like: “God is going to do what He is going to do and wills what going to happen ever since before, and until now and forever… regardless of what I do, what happens to us.”

God however makes himself known to us differently. Through Jeremiah, He reveals himself to us as a different kind of creator. Instead of a builder, He identifies himself as a potter, who forms and shapes the clay to be a new emerging creation. This means that God is more like an artist in forming and creating us. As his creation, we are hand-crafted by God – “we are in His hand” created by and through his own very hands. We are also not finished-products but a work of art in progress.

God works with circumstances as they emerge. He may intend to make a vase out of us. But events may cause God to make a cereal bowl instead, for now, and come in near future, a chinaware plate. But one thing for certain: He continually creates, forms and shapes us into more perfect persons that we can be, but patiently…. considering our circumstances and at our own pace.

God then is more than just a builder, producer or author. As our Lord Jesus makes know to us, He is our formator, parent, mentor, or coach who patiently forms us to the best that we can be at this moment, and continually shapes and reshapes us to the best we will be. 

In teaching us to pray the words of the “Lord’s prayers” Jesus is not only teaching us what to pray, but also what prayer is & how to pray. In praying the “Our Father” then, Jesus is telling us that prayer is about establishing a personal relationship with God than just behaving a formal etiquette before God. Addressing God properly as “Our father” emphasizes that God is not only our Lord, Creator, Master, above & beyond but above all God is our personal PARENT (Ama, Amahan, Father) whom we love & praise, and we trust & rely on of our human needs for sustenance, mercy & forgiveness & strength amidst the challenges of life.

Furthermore, in our gospel today Jesus is teaching us that  like a child to a parent, praying  to God is all about our asking, searching, seeking & knocking doors towards a contact, conversation & communion with God. Meaning, to pray to God as Jesus teaches us, is our affectionate love expressions (our  “pamarayeg, lambing o paanga-anga”) with God, our Father. Like any parent, God knows already what we need & wants what is better (even best) for us His children. And all we have to do is to lovingly ask, knock, seek & search what is better for us from Him. And like any parent, God blesses us all His children, and surely God blesses mostly His grateful, loving, trusting & “pamarayegon” affectionate children.

May we pray more than just out of our formal obligation or etiquette but towards having a personal loving pamarayeg with God, our Father now & always.

So be it. Hinaut pa unta. Amen.