Monday - June 16, 2008

Every Day Is Fathers Day
Yesterday was Father’s Day and my heart was focused on mothers. Why? In today’s society, mothers make fathers for their children. No, not “create;” that’s God’s province. Mothers “make” fathers . . . or they “break” them. As grandparents, we hinder or help the vital growth of our grandchildren by the way we treat their father. As mothers, our job is even more awesome.
Children need their fathers more now than they ever have. Daddy has been their first playmate, who teaches them how to be fair, yet to reach beyond themselves to achieve even more than they had ever dreamed. Dad is the moral compass of the family, he who teaches tots and teens right from wrong and to accept the consequences of their choices. When children stayed home with mom and their siblings, and Dad went out into the world to fend off the tiger at the door, it was enough for the children to be under their father’s influence for brief moments when Dad returned from battle or at sundown when they came in from the fields. And, . . . the sons of the father went into the fields with them. Now, we turn our children loose into a world of chaos and danger, with no Father at their back or by their side. We, as mothers, have too often trivialized “Dad” and make him the “joke” of the family . . . “He who does not have to be listened to.” We side with our own family and friends and deem our children’s father irrelevant, at a time when Dad is the most important piece of armor our children have, in a world at war with itself, a battle to gain the heart and soul of each one of us. When we demean “Dad,” we weaken our own children, we cripple them for the race they must run.
Let us pause for a moment to pray for fathers everywhere. Every one of them needs our support. Every one of them has been declared a “target,” to be shot at, torn down, trampled on, and stepped over. Yet, Daddy is whom our children call for in times of need. Remember once again, to whom we offer our prayers and supplications, Father God. What kind of “God the Father” is being built in the minds of our children? Let us pray:
“Oh Dear Father God, Holy is your precious and mighty name. May your kingdom of truth and righteousness come to us even as we live here and walk the path toward Home. Yet we fear that same presence, for we have sinned against the other half you have created, the Father half. Give your mighty strength, insight, and love to fathers everywhere. Our children desperately need their wisdom and presence. Just now, the very fact we may have dismissed the word “wisdom” as coming from our children’s father, displays our own sin. Forgive us Father, as you forgive those fathers who have walked away from their children, or those who have angrily done battle with the mother for the right to be “Dad.” Speak to their dear hearts and tell them to lay all rancor aside. They do not have to fight for the right to be “Daddy,” since that privilege and responsibility was given to them by you, at the time you built the mighty mountains and forged the deepest seas. No one else has to validate their role as “Daddy,” since you stamped their heart with an imprint named “Dad” when their first child was born. Father is not an earthly title. It’s an awesome crown they can and must wear. Whisper love in their heart and tell them they are, and always will be, “Pappa” to their kids, the lover of their soul. They are Dad, that is an undisputable fact. They are either a good and present dad, or a poor and absent dad, and the fault of that perception may too often lie with the mother and other family members. Forgive us, oh Father God, for we have sinned against you. We pray that you will bind-up our ability to put fathers down. Seal our lips and our actions. Cast Satan’s plan of destroying families into the deepest pit. You, Father, blessed us with family: earthly family, church family, and a heavenly family. Whether we are in an intact family or a separated one, turn our hearts so completely to you that it will be impossible for us to ever again laugh at a “dad” joke, view a program with a bumbling father and say that’s entertainment, or ridicule the only father our dear children will ever have. Forgive us, so that we may be able to spend eternity with our forever “little ones.” In the precious name of your Son, our redeemer, our brother in the family of God, we pray.
Amen, may it be so.”
Doris
Copyright 2008 Doris Gaines Rapp