My lawyer friend Devona Able tells of her daughter instructing her little brother on the way to school one morning. For some reason, they got onto the subject of hunting season. “You cannot kill baby ducks,” big sister explained. “Or mama ducks either. But you can kill daddy ducks.”
She went on to expound her understanding of the Louisiana game laws. “The baby ducks are still growing up, and the mama ducks are taking care of the baby ducks. The daddy ducks…well, they’re just extra.”
Devona writes, “Too often, we treat our husbands and fathers as unnecessary, and they’re sometimes quite willing to settle into the role of an extra.” She adds that in actuality, they have been given the “leading role” in the family by the One who wrote the script.
“I have a funny story for you,” Tom Hearon said over the phone. He was prepping for tomorrow’s oral exam for his doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and took time out to put in a phone call to “my old dad.” (Explanation: Margaret and I “adopted” four Mississippi College students in the early 1970’s: Mary Baronowski, Gary Pearce, Bill Garrett, and Tom Hearon. We love them like they were our own and pray for them often. It’s a great arrangement–they never write for money and we never send them any!)
Tom’s father died last summer in Jackson, Mississippi, and his mother just passed away last week. I hugged him over the phone, then listened to his story.
“Dad died on a Tuesday. My brother Doug flew into Jackson and the next morning we went by the funeral home. The man wanted to know,
Amen,Brother Joe! Fathers are not mere extras; they are essential. Last month, I learned that a man for whom I’ve been praying for years recently accepted Christ as His Savior. With a Christian wife and a 10-year old son who had professed faith and was baptized the year before, this new brother in the Lord is learning the basics of the scriptures, faith, discipleship, and more. For example, for the first time, he led his family in prayer at mealtime. The next day, as they sat down again to eat, their son was asked to say the blessing, as he had been taught and as he had prayed so many times before. (Surely, an example to his father; a witnessing influence in itself.) But this time, the youngster had other thoughts. “No, I want to hear daddy pray again.”
(“From the mouth of babes….” “And a little child shall lead them.”)
Yes, the scene bring tears to my eyes. Such is the yearning of children, to see the faith of their fathers expressed in simple things like mealtime prayers.
Praise God for Christian Daddies!
Greg Loewer
”The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform”. These words of that old Hymn of The
Church, shows God can work any way He chooses to bless us, and to make us a blessing to others.