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9 December 2021 · Written by Solli Solomon

Nice to meet you, I am your Father


I met God in my little room. And it really was a little room compared with the three floors of the house I lived in.

I had settled into that room because I had cut myself off from a life I wanted to change, rebuild, redefine. In such a narrow, chosen condition, one night I heard my name spoken. It was so clear and at the same time so mighty that I literally jumped up on the bed and said: God, speak.

I was frightened; I had a fear on me from having heard such majesty, and I couldn't believe my name had been spoken. Back then, as now, I didn't know the Bible and the many things hidden behind that call.

I read the Bible for seven years, every day, with Robert Roberts' reading plan, which every day for 365 days gives a chapter of the Old Testament, some middle chapters alternating between psalms, proverbs and the major or minor prophets, and ends with a chapter of the New Testament.

Of course I'm aware that what I'm saying isn't very clear, but it was precisely what I didn't know that pushed me to want to understand much more. Above all, to know the One who had shown such passion in calling me.

Since then I've discovered that He spoke my name because everything, from the beginning, has had to do with the word. John too, in his gospel, begins by saying that in the beginning was the word and the word was God. I understood why I was so afraid of that voice: because His voice is just like a waterfall, making you feel all the power of its water crashing on the rocks. I understood I wasn't the only one to jump up on the bed after hearing my name: Samuel did the same.

Things only become clear afterwards; and yet it took me seven years to read and dig into His words, compared with Paul, for whom just 3 years were enough. Of course Paul, the apostle, was in any case further ahead than me in knowledge, and so already ready to face life.

Anyway, that call has shaped my life ever since, not by limiting me but by keeping me always on the alert, always feeling ready to act. Those who know me would link my military training to this kind of thing, but in normal life it's as if, as a son, you were waiting behind the door for your father, who called you on the phone and told you to be ready because he was about to arrive. I hope I've conveyed the meaning well.

I won't hide that very often I got angry with Him, and sometimes I still do. What are you saying!? Yes, because like a restless son I'd like to go, fight, make things change, turn things upside down in people's lives, help, overturn; but this is exactly what made me understand: I want to fight for the cause , but only He knows it. And so my restlessness calms down, and I understand, and I go back to His words: the moment will come, I'll understand it.

That's how it has always been, that's how He has always directed me, that's how He has taught me. A father teaches his son something at a time when the son can't understand, when the son cares about nothing but his own interests, but that father knows that one day the son will remember his father's words. A memory that resurfaces precisely when you no longer hear your father, when he's no longer there or when he stays silent and the answer already comes to your mind. A father who seems absent but is present more than you ever considered.

How hard it is to be a father, how hard to be a parent, how hard to accept our children's attitude, having been children ourselves, but without being able or willing to remember how much they really mirror us. Only that voice which put fear in me made me realise how to be a son and how to follow the right direction so as not to lose the way.

But you did have an earthly father!

I had an earthly father, and I had him in a way honourable enough to be called father. Even if today I wanted to see his flaws, I'd see my own flaws as a father.

I met God a few years after losing my earthly father. Before that I'd had dealings with the Catholic church, with the charismatics; I played in church, I had dealings with nuns and convents, but nothing ever really spoke to me about God. I had dealings with the evangelical church and identified with it, because it isn't clothed in "images" but in the substance of the Bible. What made me aware? Certainly my call, my curiosity to discover, and surely also the pain of having lost a father and being able to discover the true fatherhood of that word. I could only do it through my own, only my own, true knowledge and curiosity.

Today I can say that we aren't able to sustain a continuous journey, because we get tired, we get out of breath, we need to stop, to rest, so we can set out again.

There is a time to move and a time to rest. A time to run and a time to go slowly, and there's a time for everything else. In Ecclesiastes there's a beautiful list describing the right time for the events of one's life; go and read it.

God, the Lord, sent His only son, and His son, Yeshua, said that what He did or said is only a part of what we could still do, discover and say after His ascension into heaven. Do you know why? Because we would have the chance to walk with the Holy Spirit. Do you know how? By recognising that we are children through the Son. By recognising Jesus and His work of Salvation for us. Yes, He Himself gave us an example: as I walked "humanly", listening to my father's voice through the Holy Spirit, so today you, humanly, can walk listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Since that call my life has changed completely and, however hard it is to believe, there has been one miracle after another. Being repaid for faithfulness: that's what comes easily for me to say. Having straightened out my ways and finding the road ahead of me clear. One correction after another that set everything right. That's how He began in my life, with a word, a call, and I put in the will to discard what was no longer good; God then made everything run as smooth as oil.

Man is always a work in progress, God always knows the cause, and this mix of working and shaping always leads to the right result.

If every person discovered they were an excellent ingredient, worked with and by God, to mix with many other excellent ingredients, the world would be a good and successful recipe. If you think the world can't become that, it's because you don't believe you can do all things through Him who gives you strength, that is God (Philippians 4:13); you only have to choose.

What is the point of knowing your father deeply?

In conclusion, the point of knowing your earthly father is knowing where and how your life is heading. Humanly we are very inclined to judge and to jump to conclusions. It also happens that many grandparents smile at their grandchildren because they notice how the same values once passed on to their own children are being passed on to them. So trying to be excellent fathers means being an example for future generations.

What I've been able to learn from God the Father is exactly this: being able to change even generational mistakes to change the future of my descendants. What I expect is not to be seen as the magnificent father, but to be able to see, in the future, that my passing on a right direction in Christ can reach my grandchildren, and to see myself in them in a better way than I managed.

The Word is full of examples of descendants and of the possibility of improving and changing, from Abraham to Christ.

God gave His only son precisely so that all those born again in Him might be an excellent example from generation to generation.

The good father is that sacrifice of waiting for things to turn out well in the lives of his descendants.


✍️ Written by Solli Solomon · 9 December 2021

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