Rain is pelting the window. Lightning flashes as thunder drums in the distance. Stormy wind whistles through the drafty house.
It’s just a fleeting memory, a snapshot taken sixty years ago. I’m a scared five-year-old. Scrambling from under my sheets, I race to safety.
Here’s what I remember best. I’m standing at my daddy’s bedside. I say only one word. “Daddy.” He knows… and throws back the blankets, nestling his little boy to his side. His arms around me, I drift off to sleep, the storm playing a gentle melody in my ears.
If I’d spoken Aramaic, I would have said, “Abba.”
That’s the moniker Jesus used when He cried out to His Father on a stormy night. At Gethsemane He told His disciples, “ ‘I am deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake.’ He went a little farther, fell to the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father! All things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will’ ” (Mark 14:32–36).
In that agonizing moment, Jesus addressed His Father with this most intimate name. Like a little boy standing at his father’s bedside, He cried out to His Daddy! … “Abba!”
At another time, Jesus encouraged His disciples to use a slightly more formal name. “He was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray…’ He said to them, ‘Whenever you pray, say, Father, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come…’ ” (Luke 11:1–2).
The sentiment is similar. Jesus invites us to approach the King of kings and Creator of the Universe and address Him intimately. Jesus didn’t demand that we address Him as “Your Honor!” or “Your Highness!” Rather, Jesus teaches us to come close and speak to our “Father.”
Paul agrees. We “are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.” We are, therefore, invited to approach Him as our “Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6–7). “For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ” (Romans 8:14–17).
As children of the King, we’re beckoned to “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). He said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
In the arms of Jesus, our raging storms become a gentle melody.
