For fathers: A closer kind of companionship – Sunday, June 20, 1954
Much of life is made up of things we think we will one day do: of things we postpone, of things we set aside, of things we leave too late.
And one of the things we could best determine to do this day, would be for fathers and sons (and daughters) to draw a little nearer, to come a little closer—to take a little more time for a closer kind of companionship with those who have first claims—with those who mean the most.
Too many of us wait too long for the cherished times together, for the intimate outings, for the quiet hours of an evening, for the fuller talking out of important personal problems with the close confidence of an understanding heart.
It is not so much the sending; it is not so much the preaching of the precepts; it is not altogether, even, the providing—but the going with, the doing with, the being with that brings a closer kind of kinship. Fathers are often too closely confined to the business of providing things physical and financial.
Often in their daily pursuits, they live competitive lives to make the means to help to make the home—to provide the things by which their loved ones may better live. And being preoccupied with pressure and problems, they may sometimes leave some things too late.
One day all of us, alike, will stand before the Father of us all, to give an account of what we have done with what we have had. And when that day comes for an of us, God grant that, through the useful virtue of our lives, we shall be an honor to the “fathers of our flesh,”1 as well as to the “Father of [our] spirits”2 that we shall be such sons and daughters that He could say also of us: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”3 God bless this day—and every day—the fathers who have faced the world for us in many ways.
And may this day increasingly become a symbol of a closer kind of companionship between fathers and daughters and sons—that father may have a fuller sense of being fathers, and that sons may have a finer sense of being sons—and that both may seek to see and do the things for one another that are sometimes left too late.
1Hebrews 12:9.
2Matt. 3:17
3Matt. 17:5.
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June 20, 1954
Broadcast Number 1,296