“My son, my son…If only I had died instead of you.” (2 Samuel 18:33)
David’s agony captures the hearts of many dads today. It’s not only the grief of losing a child, it’s the pain of not being able to take their place. Sacrificial love is at the heart of fatherhood. We would do anything to protect our children. So when death prevents us from doing that, we not only lose the one we would have given our own lives for–we can also lose our identities as “dad”.
But being a father is not something that can be taken away. Our children made us dads, and death is powerless to change that.