Tomorrow, on the third Sunday in June, is Father’s Day. In the United States, it became an official national holiday in 1972, signed into law by president Nixon. The idea was introduced by a single dad veteran in 1909 in Washington state and celebrated there for the first time on June 19, 1910.

Other countries, including Bermuda, adopted the idea to celebrate fathers like we do with mothers on Mother’s Day.

I will be travelling for Father’s Day this year to see my children and to have some holiday with them. My beautiful bride and I plan to see our four children and three grandchildren.

Among other things I plan to have a 12-day hike with our youngest and oldest son and our daughter on the Camino (a famous pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain). We will have several hours of hiking through nature every day, and we agreed on evenings without phones or Netflix. I am looking forward to that special time as a father.

My home country Germany already celebrated Father’s Day though on Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter, when Christ ascended to the Father. Christ’s “Father’s Day” became the special day for fathers and men, and as it is a national holiday in Germany that always is on a Thursday. It is perfect for long weekend planning and outings in spring.

To honour our worldly fathers on that day became custom in the late 19th century, when groups of men — meanwhile also whole families — would have a hike together, sometimes connected with an open-air worship service.

Since I know that quit a lot of people have to grow up without an earthly father or in a problematic child-father relationship, I think it can be comforting to remember that we have a heavenly Father as well.

I was lucky, I had a fantastic father who was very modern and understood a lot about childhood psychology. My parents raised seven children together and created a beautiful family that way.

Jesus taught us to try to develop this special relationship with God as the Father as well. And God is a father who will not disappoint us. Again and again, Jesus used the word “Abba”, the Aramaic equivalent to our Daddy. It is an endearing name.

In his time it was unheard of to address God in such an informal manner. There are no other writings from any rabbi or religious leader who would have used that word to address God. In fact, even to address God just as Father by human beings was unheard of.

Thus the Lord’s Prayer, which starts with the phrase “Our Father who art in Heaven,” was a totally new way to see God as a god who is approachable like a father by all people. Jesus encouraged his followers to see themselves not just as children of Abraham, but as children of God.

Jesus’s famous parable of “The Lost or Prodigal Son” (Luke 15:11-32) is an invitation to return to God’s love, compassion, and grace even if we broke with God before. God will still receive us like a loving and caring father.

A true father will always be a father. The end of this parable and also the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:10-16) even teach us that God will make no difference between those who served him already for a long time and those who come to him even at the last hour.

It is a special relationship we are invited in. The Apostle Paul writes that God adopted us into childhood several times. In Ephesians 1:5 Paul states that God “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will”.

In Romans 8:15 Paul reminds believers they “… did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” And in Galatians 4:4-5 Paul explains that God sent his Son “so that we might receive adoption as children.” (NRSV)

What is special about adoption is that adoption is always a decision. There are no accidental adoptions, while some become fathers kind of “accidentally”. When couples decide to adopt a child they go and look for it, they want it, and they are serious about it.

It is a legal process to adopt a child and the motivation of the parents is checked before they can take the child home. It is all about the best interest of the child.

And so it is with our God. God wants us to know him, to experience his love and care for our best interest. That is what Paul meant when he said we don’t have to be afraid and fall back into fear. We are not slaves, but children and full members of God’s household and heirs of his Glory.

I feel that God may have created us as human beings who grow up in a family with a mother and a father to let us see his image in that. He is a nurturing and caring God. He is the original Father human fathers can use as a role model.

God does not beat or shout, he invites, encourages and loves us. God does have expectations, but he can handle that we are not yet there, still falling again and again, just like my youngest grandchild Ruby, who just learnt walking without holding hands, still falling here and there, but confident that at the end of her walk there is her loving father Johannes who waits for her with his arms wide open to hug her and praise her.

That is how I image God the Father. He lets us make our own steps here on Earth without constantly interfering. We might even have experiences of falling, but we can be sure that God is watching us and never far to help and rescue us when we call on him, until at the end of our lives when our Father who art in heaven is waiting for us with open arms.

Happy Father’s Day, Bermuda.