My father, Norman Mellish, celebrated his 91st birthday in April. He was born into a neglected, "slum home" in Manchester, England, a home shaped by alcohol, not God and the gospel. His parents divorced when he was ten, and he and his younger sister were sent to live with a stepmother who resented two "slum kids" being foisted upon her. She packed them off to Sunday school simply to get them out of the house on a Sunday afternoon.
But, God was at work. A simple question lodged in his mind: "What if there is a God?" and at fifteen, on March 17, 1951, he bowed his knee to Christ.
That moment sparked a desire to serve God, and since then, he has given over sixty years of faithful service while raising nine kids and twenty-nine grandchildren. God took a "slum boy" and shaped him into a father who chose not to perpetuate his own childhood, but to put God and family first, and to love us all unconditionally. He is a living testament to how God's fatherly love redeems our beginnings and shapes our destiny.
This Father's Day, as we honour the men God has placed in our church family, we must remember God is our Father, a truth we see fully realized in the New Testament.
Our Father in Heaven
Scripture invites us to know God as Father. Through Christ, "you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'" (Romans 8:15). We are not orphans. We belong.
This Father is not distant. Jesus says your heavenly Father provides (Matthew 6:32). He sees, provides, remembers. And when we fail, his love does not waver: "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him" (Psalm 103:13). Compassionate. Patient. Near.
Perhaps most beautifully: "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so, we are" (1 John 3:1). Whatever our story, broken, painful, or beautiful, we have God, as our a Father whose love defines us now.
The Gift of Fathers in Our Church Family
At SDBC, we are blessed with men who quietly model this heavenly Father's heart through patient teaching, gentle correction, faithful prayer, and steady presence. These men are spiritual fathers in the faith, who disciple younger believers and stand in the gap for the discouraged, and reflect God's own fatherhood to those still finding their feet. Their faithfulness, often unseen, shapes generations.
The Call to Fathers Today
The bible gives us no shortage of models—flawed, but faithful ones. Abraham was commended for how he would "command his children and his household…to keep the way of the Lord" (Genesis 18:19). Job rose early to intercede for his children (Job 1:5). And in the parable of the prodigal son, it is the father who runs, overjoyed, to embrace his returning child (Luke 15:20).
This is the call; not to be flawless, but to be faithful to point our children, our church family, and a watching world to the Father who ran toward us first.
Today, let us commit to modelling Christ's love in our daily rhythms. Show our family what it means to apologize when we are wrong, to live out the bible in the ordinary moments, and to trust God in the unknown.
Happy Father's Day to all the men at SDBC. May you rest deeply in the love of your Heavenly Father today, and may his strength fill you as you pour into the lives of others.
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