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My wife was unexpectedly poorly yesterday and, to cut a long story short, instead of me sitting down at my computer with a very pressing deadline, I found myself sitting down at school sports day with a very lively toddler, watching our 9-year-old balance hoops on his head.

I found it unbelievably hard to be fully present, watching the clock ticking, and knowing that the serious work of the day - as it happens, a reflection on Father’s Day - was being scuppered because I was having to, well, be a father.

The irony caught up with me at last, like a tail-ender making a late-burst in the egg and spoon race; and as my son gave me an excited thumbs up from across the track, it became a little easier to see there was plenty enough serious work to be done right there and then.

Father’s Day, this Sunday, is often shrugged off by us dads as a lot of fuss about nothing - an attitude which can, possibly, betray something of what we feel about the role itself; especially when we have to juggle so many competing roles, many of which can often seem more urgent.

But is fatherhood a role at all? It’s intriguing that Jesus related to God principally as Father - which was not a functional term he used to describe a role God played, but something deeper, what we might call ‘ontological’; to do with the very core of God’s being...

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