Father's day is here once again. How do I know? It's the
commercials! Everything you see or hear is telling you what is the best gift to
buy for your father and frankly I'm a little tired of it. How is it that a day established
to honor fathers has become a marketing ploy?
I don't golf, don't need a new car, I have all the after
shave I can use and I don't need another tie. Whatever happened to the simple
things? The days when the kids made you breakfast in bed or gave you a handmade
card? What about the simple hug around the neck and the best words in the
world, "I love you dad". It is the time spent together sharing a meal
and talking about our lives, sharing what makes us happy or is breaking our
hearts. I don't know about you, but I've been given "things" through
the years, but have very few of them now. The things that I have held on to are
the cards and the hugs, those special words and special times together.
How did our society go from intimate relationships with the
father to trying to imitate love through the giving of money or things? Back in
the 1970's there was a song by Harry Chapin that came out called, "Cat's
in the cradle". The song dealt with the life of a father and son. The
father was so busy making a living that he never had time for the son and when
the son became an adult he never had time for the father… life got in the way
of living.
Perhaps that's what has happened with our relationship to
our Heavenly Father. Most of the surveys I have seen show that church attendance
in our nation has declined in the past 50 years. The same surveys show that
many, many more mothers attend a church than do fathers (the example to young
men). It seems that we are so busy trying to survive, trying to make a living,
trying to enjoy life to the fullest, that we just don't have time for our
Heavenly Father anymore. We try to compensate for it by giving larger
contributions so that someone else might be hired to fill our place.
The greatest commandment, according to Jesus is to love
the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37). If you don't, how will your children learn to do it
and how will they return it to you?
Another
favorite passage of mine is found in Deuteronomy
11:18-22 where God gives some special instructions to fathers. He says:
"Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols
on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children,
talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when
you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses
and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many
in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the
heavens are above the earth. If you carefully observe all these commands I am
giving you to follow, to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him
and to hold fast to him…" It seems it is about relationships and
actually TALKING about what is most important…
Can
you say "priorities"? Perhaps that is the key! Oh and Happy Father's
Day!
