Some Thoughts on Father's Day

Father’s Day was first celebrated in Spokane, Washington, in June 1910. The impetus for such a day came from a certain Ms Sonora Louise Smart Dodd who wanted to honour her father for raising up six children after her mother died prematurely. While slightly muted compared to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day has been celebrated on the 3^rd Sunday of June by many all over the world since the proclamation by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966.

Having a day set aside to honour each of our parents is something commendable given that the decalogue calls us to honour our earthly father and mother (Ex. 20:12) as much as they have brought us up and nurtured us in the fear of the LORD. By not forsaking our earthly parents’ commandments and law, we shall be led and kept safe (Pro. 6:20-23) in our lives and perhaps we will have a long and useful life.

Historically, Father’s Day has a lower resonance with the public and in churches compared to Mother’s Day and there were attempts in USA to bring both to equal footing. Perhaps the lesser attention given to Father’s Day can be attributed to the main role of the fathers in bringing the bacon home and compounded by the challenges or lack of parenting leadership by the fathers in admonishing and nurturing of their children (Eph. 6:4). All these result in generally less attachment and sometimes even animosity with the children given that the fathers spend much of the day outside the home while most mothers, rightly, would have taken the primary role of caregivers and spend much time at home with the children in their formative years.

On this Father’s Day, we should perhaps take a step back and consider how we fathers can improve in our admonition and nurturing of our children by patterning after our heavenly Father’s ways with His children in Christ.  We can do so because all earthly fatherhood follows the pattern of the divine fatherhood as we have in Ephesian 3:14-15, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named”. Furthermore, we can now relate to God as “Abba Father” (Gal. 4:6-7) because He is also our Redeemer as we have now been adopted through his Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through his redeeming work on the Cross.

Let us consider then, what our Lord Jesus and Scripture teach us about the heavenly Father and how we can emulate and apply the Father’s ways in earthly forms to -the children given to our care, namely:

 

·         “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt 5:48)

o   Be a good model for your children. Above all, be a godly father in the way of true Love that your child can emulate. The way of true love is not the primacy of feeling but centring on others for their good instead of self, in all our dealings in the priority and approach given by the Scripture.

·         “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” (Matt. 6:8)

o   Be connected with your children as much as our heavenly Father knows us intimately. This means that we must give priority and abundance of time to interacting with them to know their thought world and their spiritual development so that we can nurture and admonish them appropriately and not provoke them to wrath knowing that, if not, they would be more exposed to secular creeds than the holy Scripture. The priority of the day for the father is to be able to counter the prevailing falsehood about self, gender, and sex with clear and loving instruction to our children on doctrine and life from the Bible, given the exposure of our children to the Internet.

·         “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt 7:11)

o   Giving good things to our children. Now that you know what your children need, give them the right and good things. What is the highest good thing that we should give? It should be the Pearl of great price! (Matt. 13:45-46). We should continue to teach them the scriptures so that they are made “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:15). Teaching them to seek their individual identity in Christ rather than secondary things of this earth.

·         “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” (Heb. 12:6)

o   Exercise consistent loving biblical discipline on our children for their profit, growth and sanctification instead of condemnation that provokes them to wrath (Eph. 6:4). Teach them the way of life on loving God, choosing a good spouse and exercising true love to others.

·         “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37)

o   Teach them to love Jesus above all things. By giving the individual lordship of their life to Jesus, bearing his yoke and burden would be easy and light (Matt. 11:30). We will truly find abundant life (Jn. 10:10) and true freedom to do what we were originally designed to do, namely, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We will truly find true satisfaction in God in this short life and in the next forever more.

·         “When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take me up.” (Ps. 27:10)

o   Never forsake your children when they have gone wayward. Be like the prodigal father, praying, seeking, and waiting for their return (Matt. 15:20b).

We all, men, and women, can indeed bask under the sunshine of the heavenly Father’s love on this Father’s Day, knowing that we will never be forsaken because his eternal son was at one point forsaken for us but now sits at the right hand of God interceding for us. We can thus be energized to pattern after our heavenly Father’s ways in the nurturing and admonition of our children given to us. Perhaps then by God’s grace, by and by, each Father’s Day would be sweeter than the one before!

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. ² Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. ³ And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” (1 Jn 3:1-3)