Our Father

Are you afraid of your earthly father? Do you have to use special language to talk to him? God doesn't require all that either.

The first words of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples -- what we call the Lord's Prayer -- are "Our Father ". Notice Jesus doesn't say "my Father ", though he had more right than anyone else to do so. Instead he shared the fatherland of God with his disciples, and by extension with all of us.

Perhaps you had an absent father. Let God be the one who's always there. Maybe you had an angry or abusive father. God is a father of infinite patience and love.

Even if you had a father who, as far as you could tell, did nothing wrong, he was still human. God isn't, and wants to show you what a father is meant to be.

All I can say is let him.