I don’t remember much about my father’s voice from when I was small, but I remember his arms. They weren’t especially gentle. They were strong, a little rough, and they picked me up anyway whenever I needed picking up.

I came across a line this week from St. Josemaria Escriva, who spent his whole life trying to get people to see God as an actual Father, not a distant idea. He asks, “Which of you here does not remember the arms of his father?” Then he admits those arms usually weren’t as soft as a mother’s. They were strong instead. And somehow that strength is exactly what made a kid feel safe.

I’ve spent most of this week thinking about God’s fatherhood as something to understand, almost like a doctrine to get right. That question flipped it for me. If an ordinary man’s arms, imperfect, overworked, not always patient, could still make me feel held as a kid, what does that say about the arms that are actually underneath everything, the ones that never get tired and never let go.

So here’s today’s practice. Somewhere today, when things get heavy, stop for just a second. Picture being held, by whoever held you that way. Let it be a small window, not the whole view, into the Father who is holding you right now, whether you’ve noticed him there or not.

Today’s Bible Study

Moses says this about God near the end of Deuteronomy: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Not arms that might get tired partway through the day. Everlasting ones. I like that it says underneath, not around. It’s not just that God wraps his arms around us when things get hard. He’s already underneath us, holding up the ordinary weight of an ordinary day, whether we’ve noticed him there or not.

Recommended Reading

St. Josemaria Escriva’s Friends of God, the book this week’s quote comes from, is free to read online at escriva.org. It isn’t academic at all, just homilies that keep circling back to the same thing, that God is actually a Father, and we’re allowed to believe that all the way down.