Voids beg to be filled. Two examples:

1. Our oldest son joined our family by way of foster care when he was 4 1/2. For the next months, we watched the tug of war in his mind between the familiar (his birth mother and abusive father) and the current (my wife and me). We watched him wage war with angry outbursts and physical flailing.

My wife wisely saw that he could not give up the past until he found a present and future hope that was secure. By grace, a judge terminated his parents’ rights and separated him from his past. We adopted him on his 6th birthday.

From the first, he called me Daddy Mike — a name we agreed on to indicate my fatherly function and personal presence in his life. But it was a temporary title, one that could have been transferred to the next father figure. It simply gave him a place to hang his need for a father. I was a daddy; I became the Daddy. His void was filled.

2. My second son recently married a single mother. Her daughter called him Paul. But as the couple grew closer, and the three of them spent more time together, she yearned to address him by a fatherly title. Finally, when they were engaged, they let her do so. Instead of Paul, he became Pa.

In that moment, her identity changed. That which she innately hoped for was realized. She found a place to rest securely. Her void was filled.

Yearning for a father — it is a very real need and desire, a void to be filled. Like many things, it is a worldly picture of a spiritual truth. God made us to yearn for a heavenly Father.

Is it not enough that He would sacrifice His obedient Son to redeem us from my sin, then assign that Son’s righteousness to my account? That way I can enter His throne room to serve Him, and be spared His wrath reserved for the unrepentent.

Apparently not. Beyond redemption, God adopted me, bringing me as a son into His throne room to dine at His table, to indulge in His fellowship, to share in an inheritance.

Like all children (and especially the lost, the orphans, those with no known father at all), I yearned for a father.

God met my need temporarily on earth. But far more significantly, He has met my need permanently now and forever. I may rightly say, “Our Father, who art in heaven….”