People call God a father and it does not land for me, because mine was not safe. How am I meant to hear that word?

“Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting.”

This sits inside a long prayer from people whose great national fathers, Abraham and Israel, could do nothing for them in their present ruin. They reach past that inherited line entirely and address God himself as father and redeemer. It is a prayer written by people whose fathers had failed them, which is precisely why it is useful to anyone whose own father did.

“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

Paul was writing to a church that included former slaves, people who knew exactly the difference between a household you serve in and one you belong to. The Aramaic word he keeps untranslated, Abba, is intimate ordinary family speech, and he says the Spirit produces it in us rather than us working it up. If the word father costs you something, the initiative here is God's.