Where Father Lives – Sunday, June 16, 1985
A father died and left a grieving child. “Where is my father now?” she asked, then paused. Scanning a family portrait, she saw his mark on every child, gene deep. One with father’s dark eyes, another with his height, large hands on still another to cup with comfort a slumping shoulder. “That’s where my father lives,” she said.
Then on into the day she went, and the clouds grew thick around her and the light fled until she knew fear. “The world is not a safe place,” she said, “Where is my father now?” When others trembled and fell back, she kept walking, one footstep at a time, finding the only safety in her soul. “That’s where my father lives,” she said.
She came upon an ailing friend along the road that others hurried by. “When someone needs help it is when they need it—not some other time,” she heard her father say. She had no time, but still she stopped. “That’s where my father lives.”
Every father leaves his mark upon his child more indelibly than in any other place. He may run a corporation, carve monuments to his greatness, create legislation in his name, but it is his child who will show the sure impression of what he was.
“I want to be like my Dad,” writes the primary scholar, describing his ambitions—and he will be, too, socially handicapped or armed for triumph by the man who reared him.
Consider the lessons of fathers.
A child’s first sense of security may be because the father who knows the contradictions and injustices of the world protects him like the aspen does the seedling pine. The pine will know the weather soon enough. For now, it needs to establish solid roots.
A child’s sense of right may come because a father has uncompromising integrity. His actions are not based upon expediency, but values. Create a business colleague, go for greed, lie just this once when it’s convenient? Never.
A child’s sense of compassion may grow because his father showed him that kindness is not weak. Stop for the stricken motorist, build another’s confidence, help with the dishes? Of course.
Jesus Christ told us that we would know the Father if we knew Him. We, too, are our father’s child. And, even when he’s gone, some gestures, some holding on when it seems impossible, some rise of courage when all else fails us can let us know—that’s where our father lives.
June 16, 1985
Broadcast Number 2,913