Father’s Day 2023 | ‘What’s brown and sticky?’

I love being a dad. I have three great children that are now adults who are beautifully created with gifts and passions and unique personalities. It’s been a great privilege to be a part of their lives and see them grow and develop into independent thinkers as they dream about what life might have in store for them.

A great part of being a dad is access to the inner sanctum of punny humour – the dad joke. This classic genre of humour is reserved for the older male relative, typically dads, but also grandfathers, uncles etc. A good dad joke transcends the obvious and leaves the listener wondering what level of complicated witticism their father has now elevated his comic ability to. Children can but appreciate the genius of the well-timed and phrased dad joke.

I sometimes wonder whether Jesus’ earthly father was a proponent of the Hebrew dad joke. I’m imagining some comment from dad in the carpentry workshop about Jesus finishing a project and really “nailing it”! We can only speculate on what was going on there. We do know that Jesus’ heavenly father is the God of all things, and we see echoes of his humour in the Bible, and of course we can rejoice in the ultimate joy we have in Him. Despite providing advanced humourous content on many occasions, I don’t regard myself as a perfect dad. I have made many mistakes and I hope my children will be forgiving of those. Even if our earthly fathers fail us, it is a great reassurance that we can depend on our loving heavenly Father. As followers of Jesus we can rejoice in the knowledge that we are God’s precious children.