God, and the parent

Why is it that the power we call God is often considered as a parent? Is it merely because this power is responsible for creation, or is it because in many intriguing and astounding ways, this unseen power is directing us by a complicated enmeshed set of guidelines.
While I was studying a course in creative teaching, I was taught about different ways of helping a child develop the right attitudes. I had thought then that when I have my own kids I would use the same techniques. But I realized the hard way that being a parent 24/7 does not give time to think and use techniques! The real parent often just reacts rather than proacts, and it just gets worse when you have more than one to handle!
But when I look at how God works in each of our individual lives, he does seem to be using all those creative techniques and even has patience for each and every living being!

Let me give examples. When a child does something wrong, rather than slapping or caning, the teacher/parent is supposed to use ‘consequences’. ‘If you don’t keep back your toys today, you wont get to play with them tomorrow’. That’s a simple example of consequence. But I find even that very difficult to apply! I may quite easily use that statement today but tomorrow when my child pesters me with constant chatter just when I am trying to relax with a book, what do I do!? ‘Go and play with the toys’ That’s what I would end up saying!

But the power behind the universe called ‘God’, uses consequences without fail for every act that every individual does. ‘The Law of Karma’ is nothing but the ‘technique of consequence’. God never punishes us; rather our actions catch up on us.

One interesting creative technique of teaching was ‘being a scaffold’. For example if a child asks a question, don’t give the answer right away. Wonder with the child, ask leading questions which he/she can answer and lead by small rungs to the final answer. This is to help the child think on his own.
“Give a man a fish, he will have something to eat, but teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
But as a parent of a ‘gemini’ child who even thinks aloud in words and questions, I often find myself just irritatedly snapping at questions!
But God has the patience to use the technique effectively for each and every individual! Now really how much patience would that require!!
Whenever seeking for answers of any sort, all of us would have noted the coincidences in life that seemingly are unrelated to our question or goal, but after a long winding way, or little rungs of success, we suddenly find ourselves somewhere that is in some queer way linked to our state of mind or questions about a couple of years(or more) ago. That is how God works; never dropping things into our lap as answer to every silly prayer, but gently guiding us to a state of mind where our prayers are more meaningful and answers are just over the next rung.

God is an unseen parent but is so much more efficient than any well meaning visible human parent! And for all the damage that parents can do to kids by bad parenting, God can reverse it and bring something good out of it. Don’t children of insensitive parents sometimes think through it all and learn the importance of being sensitive and become better people than they would have otherwise been? Their lonely life often forces them to turn to the one real perfect parent of all…, the God Parent, and learn His ways.

God does intend us to realise eventually that what we are looking for, is often perfection and that is not in the world, its only in His Love...