The spirit by which we cry "Abba, Father"

Had some odd dream this morning about rollerblading through shopping malls/wal-mart as some sort of corportate team building excerise & I somehow lost my rollerblades & was trying to find them in various rental skate cases where the skates looked more like vacuum cleaners.... (no, I am not on crack).

This sort of left me in a half awake state & I was brought to full alertness by hearing my niece in the next room awake with a screech calling out for "Daddy!!!" (guess her dreams were worse than mine)

This made me think about the verses in, I believe Romans 8, where it talks about us the spirit of adoption in us which cries out, "Abba, Father" "daddy" to God. Often times I think this crying for our 'Daddy' comes in the good moments, in the moments where we somehow realize just how deeply we're loved & our heart confesses some great spiritual reality that our spirit is awaking to....

...but I am reminded today that this cry for "Daddy" is perhaps even more real, more relevant in our lives when it's in the middle of the dark night, in strange places, where we feel all alone & the shadows of our dreams leave us clouded with terror.