What is God like? We’ve been exploring that question, each time with a different image for an answer. So far, we’ve thought about how God is like the words “I Am,” how God is like a potter and how God is like bread.

Today we turn to an image that is probably more familiar than any other for most Christians ― God as parent.

The religion of the Hebrews was not the first to regard God as father. Do you remember your Greek mythology, where Zeus was the father of the gods? And though we have no written records, historians tell us that the religion of many primitive peoples included worship of the Great Mother, from whose womb all things were born.

It was natural for people in early civilizations to think of the deity as a parent. For all children, there is a sense in which their parents are godlik…