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Fathers, listen up if you’ve got a moment! Put down your tools, your golf clubs, and your fiery ambition for just a few and lend me your ears. Our sons and daughters need us. Can’t you hear them crying, out in the storm, waves crashing against their tiny little boats, adrift in this mighty storm of life?
They need our leadership, our counsel and our strength to guide them through the storm. But you say, “I can’t, I’m too busy at work, or I don’t have the time. I don’t have the tools, or knowledge to help them and my own boat is drifting helplessly close to the rocks.” Or maybe even, “I don’t want to, I made a mistake, they’re better off without me.”
But I say to you, “how can we ignore them, how can we ignore the ones that someday we’ll pray would just take a few extra minutes to come visit us at the nursing home, or on our deathbeds? How can we any longer ignore our responsibilities as fathers? How can we ever fix ourselves if we don’t acknowledge, or participate in the lives of the children we’ve left behind, the children that are apart of us? How can we be so careless toward them?
Whether you’re a father who just doesn’t seem to have enough time because of work, or a father who just can’t seem to hide far enough away from your kids, it’s time to own up to the life and responsibility you helped create, a responsibility we as men can no longer pass on to the overburdened social agencies that were created to plug the dam of our indiscretions.
So get up! Stand up and dust yourself off; the kids need us to come forward and be men…, real men – fathers! Each father who tries and stumbles, maybe falls down a time or two, but gets back up will be called a hero by a rescued child from this turbulent sea of life.
Open your eyes! Will one more conquest at the club, one more hour at work, or one more stroke off your game ever bring back those innocent young lives lost on our nation’s playgrounds? No, but one more hour at home might, one more bike ride might, or one more phone call might. Maybe, just maybe, an hour studying how to become a better father might prevent further senseless sacrifice of those precious young ones we helped give life to.
Our time of blaming guns, video games and TV is wasted. Real men take responsibility and real men are supposed to love a challenge and a good fight? Let us instead try having the courage to take responsibility for our actions and be accountable for the decisions we make in life. We are not being asked to be the model of perfect fatherhood; nobody is perfect. All that anyone can ask is that we take care of our own little piece of the pie.
In ancient times, prophets cried out in the streets to their countrymen to turn away from their wickedness and evil ways and were laughed at by the citizens of powerful and wealthy civilizations long since turned to dust.
Now, I tell you the truth when I say that it doesn’t take a prophet to predict what history has already proved time and time again. Civilizations that lose their way ultimately turn to dust. As it was written in Malachi 4:5-6 (NLT) “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the LORD arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.” Whether you subscribe to the laws of God or the laws of physics, one thing is certain, neither law is continually broken without reckoning.
Remember, someday they will be strong and you will be frail. They will treat you in your frailty how you treated them in theirs. Our children cry out for us! Throw them a line and guide them home. Let them know you don’t have all of the answers, but you will never leave their side until they’re ready to face the world. Let them consume our time rather than our time consuming us in idle and worthless pursuits.
And finally, let us most of all be thankful that our Heavenly Father does not consider time with us to be a waste.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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