I’ve been reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

In this book, Lewis explains how Christ is the Son of God and also is God; and how man was created by God, but is not God. Being a Christian means that a human is becoming a son of God; slowly becoming more and more like Jesus.

For the last year I have been writing God letters in a special journal. I usually begin them “Father, . . .” Today, I wondered if this was appropriate. I’m so, so far from truly being God’s child–from being a “little Christ” as C.S. Lewis put it.

But the Holy Spirit is inside me, and by Him I cry “Abba, Father.” (See Romans 8:15, 16.)

I fall utterly short of Jesus’ perfection, but God, somehow, made a way for me to become perfect. Someday, I believe I will be.

“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
-1 John 3:2

In the mean time, I call God “Father” anyway.

~*~

I met my little sister Lucy for the first time four years ago, in a civil affairs building in China. She shook my hand and greeted me as jie jie, the Mandarin word for “big sister.”

The two of us had never before been in the same room. We were strangers calling ourselves sisters, but it wasn’t a charade. It was a declaration. We called each other family as we, miraculously, became more and more like sisters.

And I call God “Father” while I slowly learn to truly be His daughter.

“This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.'”
-Matthew 6:9, 10