My Father's Sacrificial Love

My Father’s Sacrificial Love

Lawrence Yoo

When I was a kid, living in Pennsylvania, my father worked two jobs. He would leave early in the morning to go to a steel mill, work there all day, then come home and have an early dinner with our family before going to his second job as a cook at a Chinese restaurant. He did this six days a week without a vacation or break. This was his life.

One of my early memories is asking my father for money to go to a school-sponsored trip to an amusement park. I don’t even remember where we went, but I distinctly remember seeing my father’s hands as he reached into his wallet to give me the money. I saw open sores, blisters, and burns. I saw hands that were chapped, cracked, and broken in so many places, and I realized for the first time what that meant for me. Those painful broken hands were willingly reaching into his wallet so I could go on a trip that I can’t even remember now. Those hands willingly worked in front of a hot fire just so my sister and I could have a better life. In that moment, I learned so much about sacrificial love.

My dad wasn’t a perfect father. He made his mistakes like all people do, but he gave me a picture of what sacrificial love could look like and that picture has lasted a lifetime. It prepared my heart to see and know the sacrificial love that Jesus shows us through his nailed pierced hands on the cross and the scars that remained even in his resurrected body.

1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” Part of our heavenly father’s lavish love is found in his willingness to sacrifice for us. Whether or not you had an earthly example, I pray you would be able to see and experience our heavenly father’s lavish love, and from that place of knowing you are loved, you would be able to reflect God’s sacrificial love to the children around you.