Today we honor our fathers. And that's good. Dads don't get much respect nowadays. A doting father used to sing his little children to sleep. He even learned a few lullabies to lend some variety to the task. This was something he could do at night to help his wife out. And he kept up this task until one night he overheard his four-year-old give her younger sibling this advice, "If you pretend you're asleep," she said, "he stops." That was the end of the lullabies.
Garrison Keillor, on his "Writer’s Almanac" on National Public Radio said that Father's Day goes back "to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother's Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition, too. So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father's birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father's Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother's Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father's Day, not until 1972. Mother's Day is still the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants and long distance phone companies. Father's Day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.
"It was Strindberg who said, ‘That is the thankless position of the father in the family the provider for all and the enemy of all.' Oscar Wilde said, ‘Fathers should neither be seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.'" (1)
In our lesson from Mark, Jesus is describing the kingdom of God: "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how . . ."
Now Jesus is not talking about fatherhood in this passage, but isn't this the very first area in which we participate in the coming of God's kingdom to earth? It is in the raising of our children. Raising good children is like scattering seed upon the ground.
As author Ken Canfield notes, there are no guarantees in either raising kids or planting seed. A farmer can do all the right things and still lose a crop. So can parents. The farmer can till the ground at the right time, put in the right seed, and irrigate and fertilize according to the textbook. But that does not guarantee a crop. (2)
Some of you have learned the hard way that there are no guarantees. But generally, if we have done the best we can in planting and nurturing the seed which are our children, God will reward us with children we can be proud of.
Let's begin here on this Father's Day: Fathers are important.
It doesn't always work out, of course. And many young women today are doing a superb though difficult job of raising their young without a Dad, but, where possible, having Dad around can make a real difference.
Some of you are familiar with William Raspberry, a syndicated writer with the Washington Post. In a recent column he made this analogy:
Some years ago, South Africa's game managers had to figure out what to do about the elephant herd at Kruger National Park. The herd was growing well beyond the ability of the park to sustain it. And so they decided to transport some of the herd to a nearby game park.
A dozen years later, however, several of the young male elephants (now teenagers) that had been transported to the game park began attacking the park ‘s herd of white rhinos, an endangered species. They used their trunks to throw sticks at the rhinos, chased them over long hours and great distances and stomped to death a tenth of the herd all for no discernible reason.
Park managers decided they had no choice but to kill some of the worst juvenile offenders. They had killed five of them when someone came up with another bright idea. They brought in some of the mature male elephants still residing in the KrugerPark and hoped that the bigger, stronger males could bring the adolescents under control. To the delight of the park officials, it worked. The big bulls quickly established the natural hierarchy and reduced the violent behavior of the younger bulls.
"The new discipline, it turned out, was not just a matter of size intimidation," says Raspberry. "The young bulls actually started following the Big Daddies around, yielding to their authority and learning from them proper elephant conduct. The assaults on the white rhinos ended abruptly." (3)
Raspberry's point was that young males whether they are wild animals or human beings need Dads. Those of us who grew up in families in which Dad was a positive influence will quickly agree. It doesn't always work out like that, of course. There are some families in which Dad is absent, and it cannot be helped. There are other families in which Dads do more harm than good, but fortunately that's true in only a minority of families. Most Dads do the best they can. And we're proud to be able to honor them. Fathers are important.
A conscientious father can do wonders in the lives of his children. Many of us have observed this in our own families. A conscientious Dad can have a wondrous impact on the lives of his offspring.
For football fans there is a father who is rightfully being celebrated this year. He is Archie Manning, former NFL quarterback, successful businessman, husband and father of three sons, two of whom, Peyton and Eli, former and current starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Even more important, all three Manning boys are men of character.
Archie claims that one of his greatest joys in life is his relationship with his sons. All the Manning boys praise their father for being actively involved in their lives. They describe him as loving and supportive. Archie recalls that as his sons were growing up, he made sure to spend lots of time with them. One reason that Archie Manning has been so deliberate in building a relationship with his sons is because he lost that chance with his own father. Manning was just nineteen when his father committed suicide. He determined that he would never waste an opportunity to show his sons how much he loved them. And he didn't. (4) It inspires us when any man takes his responsibilities at home seriously. We celebrate sports heroes as Dads only because their example sometimes makes us want to do better.
In 1985 Tim Burke saw his boyhood dream come true the day he was signed to pitch for the Montreal Expos. After four years in the minors, he was finally given a chance to play in the big leagues. And he quickly proved to be worth his salt setting a record for the most relief appearances by a rookie player.
Along the way, however, Tim and his wife, Christine, adopted four children with very special needs two daughters from South Korea, a handicapped son from Guatemala, and another son from Vietnam. All of the children were born with very serious illnesses or defects. Neither Tim nor Christine was prepared for the tremendous demands such a family would bring. And with the grueling schedule of major-league baseball, Tim was seldom around to help. So in 1993, only three months after signing a $600,000 contract with the Cincinnati Reds, Tim Burke decided to retire from baseball.
When pressed by reporters to explain this decision, he simply said, "Baseball is going to do just fine without me. But I'm the only father my children have." (5)
Of course, you don't have to be a sports hero to be a great Dad. There are men all over this world who are seeking to model what it means to be a Christian Dad.
Maybe you know the story of a hotel manager in Rwanda named Paul (Rusesabagina). In 1994, Hutu militants began a brutal assault against their Tutsi neighbors. More than a million people were murdered by the Hutu. In the midst of this slaughter over 1,200 desperate people took refuge in Paul's hotel. Daily, Paul faced down armed troops who wanted to invade the hotel and kill the occupants. Paul's courage and steadfastness in protecting the refugees in his hotel was so remarkable that they made a movie, Hotel Rwanda, about this event.
Paul credits two heroes with giving him the courage he needed in that critical hour, his father and Nelson Mandela. His father had been well respected in the community. He was a wise man, and he always told the truth. When there were disputes in the community, the elders called on Paul's father to mediate. He was so honest that if one party in a dispute was lying, they often confessed their lie as soon as they saw Paul's father. His noble character made him influential in his community. Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, inspired Paul because he used non-violence and communication to bring about peace between enemies. Paul claims that the examples of his father and Nelson Mandela inspired him as he faced murderous mobs during the Hutu massacre. (6)
A great Dad can have that kind of influence. Many Moms are just as courageous. Still it is true that a conscientious father can do wonders in the lives of his children. There are no guarantees, but when a conscientious man or woman plants a seed and takes the necessary steps to nurture that seed, miracles can occur.
Of course, the love of any parent is but a pale reflection of the love of God. God is the ultimate sower of good seed in our world. We would not even know how to love, if God had not first loved us.
In his book, Disappointment with God, writer Philip Yancey relates a touching story from his own life. One time on a visit to his mother who had been widowed years earlier, in the month of Philip's first birthday they spent the afternoon together looking through a box of old photos. A certain picture of him as an eight-month-old baby caught his eye. Tattered and bent, it looked too banged up to be worth keeping, so he asked her why, with so many other better pictures of him at the same age, she had kept this one.
Yancey writes, "My mother explained to me that she had kept the photo as a memento, because during my father's illness it had been fastened to his iron lung." During the last four months of his life, Yancey's father lay on his back, completely paralyzed by polio at the age of twenty-four, encased from the neck down in a huge, cylindrical breathing unit. With his two young sons banned from the hospital due to the severity of his illness, he had asked his wife for pictures of her and their two boys. Because he was unable to move even his head, the photos had to be jammed between metal knobs so that they hung within view above him the only thing he could see. The last four months of his life were spent looking at the faces he loved.
Philip Yancey writes, "I have often thought of that crumpled photo, for it is one of the few links connecting me to the stranger who was my father. Someone I have no memory of, no sensory knowledge of, spent all day, every day thinking of me, devoting himself to me, loving me . . . The emotions I felt when my mother showed me the crumpled photo were the very same emotions I felt that February night in a college dorm room when I first believed in a God of love. Someone is there, I realized. Someone is there who loves me. It was a startling feeling of wild hope, a feeling so new and overwhelming that it seemed fully worth risking my life on." (7)
Philip Yancey is one of the most important Christian writers living today. Obviously his mother's influence was powerful. But his father's love, even though he cannot even remember his father, helped get him off to a good start. And, as he would be the first to acknowledge, any parent's love, regardless of how intense, is but a pale reflection of the love God has for each of us.
Do you understand that God has a photo of you that God looks at every day? That was how Max Lucado once phrased it. "God has a photo of you on his refrigerator . . ."
Fathers, like mothers, are important. A conscientious father can have an amazing impact on his children. But no matter how much our Dad loves us, or our Mom, there's someone who loves us more. Someone gave His only Son in our behalf. Let's honor our fathers this day. Let's praise our Heavenly Father who is the source of all life and love.
1. writersalmanac.publicradio.org
2. Steve Farrar, Standing Tall (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc. 2001).
3. Tuesday, October 11, 2005, Washington Post Writers Group.
4. Todd Richissin, Fathers & Sons (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000), pp. 90-91.
5. Dr. James Dobson, Coming Home, Timeless Wisdom for Families (Tyndale House Pub, Inc., Wheaton; 1998), pp. 16-17.
6. "The Hero-Driven Life," O, the Oprah Magazine, November 2005, pp. 210-212.
7. Cited in Victoria Brooks, Delighting God (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2003).