Trinity Sunday and Father's Day

Today is Trinity Sunday and Father's Day.

As I was preparing our weekly Bible Study with the Medical Professionals in the hospital, I was reflecting on the Gospel text in Matthew, "...baptizing them unto the Father, Son and Holy Spirit..."

The debate on the gender sensitivity of the name Father in the Trinity has been going on for years, which even grew louder with the rise of feminist theology. I will not dwell on that. For the simple reason that Jesus was called Jesus and Jesus called God his Father and the Holy Spirit was called such will I refer to the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What I wanted to emphasize for my colleagues in our Bible study is the relationship of the Three persons in the Trinity. Moreso between the Father and the Son.

In our present tines, many people are members of broken family. The importance of the family in our daily affairs cannot be overemphasized. I have realized this since I became a Family Medicine doctor. Broken relationships have caused trouble and pathologic results for children and the whole family. And the father-child relationship is one of the culprit. In one study, it found out that fathers spend as little as less than 5 minutes with their children a day. Maybe because Father's are so busy with work and even when they get home, they are still pre-occupied with other stuff. Much more alarming is that the study showed that father and child spend only a couple of seconds talking to each other. I would have doubted this. But I remember what happened to me the other month.

It takes me several hours to go to work. So I leave the house when everybody is still asleep, including my kids. That day, I was on duty in the hospital so I did not come home. The next day, I had a meeting so I came home late. I arrived at home when the kids are ready to sleep. When I entered the room, they greeted me with excitement. But I wanted them to sleep right away because I have some more paper works to do. So I went out of the room and did my work. In those three days, I have probably spent a couple of minutes with my kids and a few little words of "good night!" only. I try not to be that anymore!

But the fact remains that such thing could happen. That relationships between father and child could be sacrificed leading to broken relationships. And so sometimes I wonder if our relationship with our God, the Father isn't the same? We only talk to him for a couple of seconds with some few little words. And then we get busy with a lot of things. What kind of relationship with Him do we expect then? How can we improve our relationship with our Father God? Spend more time with Him? Yes, but how? Hopefully, honoring HIM today would be a start.