Abba

I know this seems like a real stretch, but did you see Omar Sharif in the movie Hidalgo? Sharif plays an Arabian sheikh and owner of the most prestigious Arabian horses on earth.  Frank Hopkins, an American half-breed of the Lakota Sioux tribe, becomes a challenger in a 3000 mile race across the Arabian desert, the "Ocean of Fire" race.

This is a "man's" race, no place for a woman. But Sharif's daughter, a crack rider herself, tries to appeal to her father to allow her to run.  In the film they speak Arabic, in which she pleads with "Abbi".  You couldn't help but be drawn into the tenderness of the moment as she spoke to her dad, her father.

I know it seems trivial and somewhat silly to run this as a parallel to a scriptural reference, but the point is this.  Abba in Hebrew means father, and no matter how much we understand that fact, it still comes off as a foreign sounding title rather than the close, personal, tender appeal of a child.  But when hearing the sheikh's daughter plead, the word transformed from some foreign title to a meaningful name that any one of us could easily internalize.  The film got a B rating, but that one scene was a nice touch.

Here is the truth.  There is no other faith in existence whose god is known as a tender father except ours and I hope we can all grow in our true relationship with our Creator as "Abba".