These illustrations are for Matthew 10:24-39 and Father's Day
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Sermon Opener – Stop Being Afraid - Matthew 10:24-39
Jesus' instructions to his disciples prior to their first mission continue in today's gospel reading. He has been telling them about all the dangers and hardships they may have to put up with and ends by saying (in effect), "What do you expect? A disciple is not greater than his teacher. If the world gives me a bad time, it will give you one too" (Matthew 10:24-25).
So what does Jesus do? Sell them life insurance? Give them bullet-proof vests? Teach them how to diffuse conflict? Hardly. Instead he says, "Don't ever be afraid of your enemies and critics. Even though it's not obvious now, the truth will come out finally. So, speak up; shout it out; stand and deliver" (10:26-27). Oh, my. We don't want to be heroes, especially not religious ones. It's all we can do to get to church on Sundays and we're supposed to be shouting the word of God from the housetops? No way. We're afraid.
But Jesus doesn't quit. "Stop being afraid" (that's the force of the verb); "stop being afraid" -- not just once but always. "Stop being afraid of people who can kill the body but not the soul." The point is that people can hurt us only temporarily because life comes from God. Even if they kill us, God the author of life will raise us. "Don't fear people; fear God" (the one who can kill both body and soul) (10:28).
Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus is saying that the voice of the people is not the voice of God. We worry way too much about what other people say or think of us and far too little about what God thinks of us. We know this is true. We've heard it before. But, it's easier said than done…
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Cross Choices - Matthew 10:24-39
A man once told his friends of a system he had invented to preserve domestic peace. “The day we married ten years ago,” he said, “we decided that all important decisions should be made by me. Small decisions were left to my wife.” When his friends asked him how it had worked out, he replied, “Perfectly, there hasn’t been a single hitch in the entire ten years. Of course,” he added, “no important decision has come up yet.”
The challenge of human existence is that life is made up of decisions, insignificant or crucial, mundane or complex. As we know from history and our own experiences, even the most trivial decision can have a huge impact on our lives and that of others. Therefore, it isn’t always easy for us to make decisions.
That was especially true in our household when our two daughters were still at home. Let me explain: In the 1980s and 1990s there were a lot of studies being done on a unique group of people known as TCKs — third culture kids. TCKs are persons who have spent a significant part of their formative years growing up in another country and culture significantly different from that of their parents’ country and culture of origin. One of the common traits of TCKs is that even as adults they have trouble making essentially unimportant everyday decisions in a group setting. Well, in a household with four missionary TCKs under one roof (our daughters were born in Madagascar, and both my wife and I grew up in Ethiopia and Papua, New Guinea, respectively), you can imagine how difficult it was for us to decide on which fast-food restaurant to eat at, or which video to rent!
On the other end of the spectrum, our modern world tends to minimize the importance of all decisions and choices, based on the widespread belief that there are no absolute “either/or” situations out there. We want it both ways, and naively hope that evil will somehow turn into good so that we don’t have to be called on to make a final and total rejection of whatever it is we want to keep holding onto. But Christian apologist C.S. Lewis pointed out that this belief leads only to disaster because life is not like the radii of a circle, all leading eventually to the center, or even like tributary creeks and streams, all flowing together into the main river. No, Lewis argued that life as we experience it is far more like a road that continuously forks into new roads, or a tree whose branches keep spreading further and further apart. Another example of this principle is what we see in the breeding of dogs for specialization: “Good, as it ripens,” Lewis wrote, “becomes continuously more different not only from evil but from other good.”1
So the rescue of those who choose wrong roads in this life consists first, in stopping, and then in getting off the wrong road and getting onto the right one. Math errors, for example, simply don’t go away from a calculation; you have to go back to the beginning and start all over. Error and evil can be undone, but time alone does not heal them, and they do not “evolve” or develop into good.
Life very rarely if ever presents us with “both/and” situations when it comes to important matters....
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Effective Teaching
Robert Frost's first assignment for a class of teachers was to read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." This was Mark Twain's famous story about a frog that lost a jumping contest because he had been pumped full of quail shot. When the class next assembled they were mystified because they did not understand what this story had to do with a course in education.
Frost patiently explained to them that this particular story was about teachers. He said that there were two kinds of teachers. There was the kind that filled you with so much quail shot that you could not move and the kind that gave you a little prod on the behind so that you could jump to the skies.
Gary W. Houston, Cowherding Christians, CSS Publishing Company
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Humor: What God Can’t Do
A Sunday school teacher was examining her pupils after a series of lessons on God's omnipotence. She asked: "Is there anything God can't do?"
There was silence. Finally, one lad held up his hand. The teacher, disappointed that the lesson's point had been missed, asked: "Well, just what is it that God can't do?" "Well," replied the boy: "He can't please everybody."
Gary W. Houston, Cowherding Christians, CSS Publishing Company
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Do Not Call It Sacrifice
A couple, visiting in Korea, saw a father and his son working in a rice paddy. The old man guided the heavy plow as the boy pulled it.
"I guess they must be very poor," the man said to the missionary who was the couple’s guide and interpreter.
"Yes," replied the missionary. "That’s the family of Chi Nevi. When the church was built, they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money. So they sold their ox and gave the money to the church. This spring they are pulling the plow themselves."
After a long silence, the woman said, "That was a real sacrifice."
The missionary responded, "They do not call it a sacrifice. They are just thankful they had an ox to sell."
Bishop Ray W. Chamberlain Jr., Season of Sacrifice
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Your Mission, Should You Accept It
I played in the high school band before the days of flag corps, rifle drill teams and dance routines. Everything depended on the band and its abilities and talents in playing and marching. Every week we had to learn an entire new set of songs, to go with our new marching formations to be performed at half time of the football games. We all received our instructions early in the week and then practiced them until we got them right. They were not always easy: count time, play the music, step out on the appropriate measure and move exactly eight steps every five yards. As long as everyone followed their set of instructions, the maneuvers on the field were correct and the trombones did not run into the clarinets. Of course, if you missed a beat, or turned the wrong way, you could, as I did on one occasion, end up at one end of the field while the rest of the band was at the other. It's not easy trying to convince everyone that you were right and the other 64 were wrong!
The disciples are called to march, to move out with a special mission in the world. Matthew heard those moving words as addressed not only to him but to all who would join the movement in the years to come. There is about them an echo of the old television program "Mission: Impossible!" I can hear the words coming through: "Your mission, Matthew, should you decide to accept it…."
Larry M. Goodpaster, Like a Breath of Fresh Air, CSS Publishing Company
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ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
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Hemlock and Hyssop - Romans 6:1-11 by Leonard Sweet
Of all the things Christians do, baptism might be the weirdest –– at least from an outsider perspective. For those born into the Christian tradition, baptism is a wonderful, beautiful moment, a joyful celebration. For those outside the Christian faith, it can seem completely strange, even macabre.
Baptism is a “ritual drowning,” a symbolic death that ushers the baptized into a spiritually reborn, renewed life. However we dress this ritual up — whether with lacy baptismal gowns for infants or with lemonade and cookies for older children and adults — it is still a truly strange ceremony.
One eight year old, upon being told that baptism meant she was being “buried with Jesus” responded, quite reasonably, “Well! That’s not very nice.” (As told by theologian Claire Watkins in her book Living Baptism [2004] 58)
That eight-year old child was absolutely right. That does NOT sound very nice. It sounds nuts. It sounds “weird.” Maybe that’s part of our problem -- Christians aren’t “weird” enough.
Baptism is not just a momentary ritual. It is a seemingly strange and yet absolutely life-changing event. In this week’s Romans text Paul proclaims this weirdness as a proud Christian conviction: “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”
But that is only half of the baptismal equation. The rest of this peculiar journey is revealed by Paul’s conclusion: “so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Do you get it? For Christians, what appears to be a “death” ritual is actually a life affirming action. Baptism is the symbol of our transition from frailty to fullness, from cease and desist to live and let live, from burial to birth...
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Religion: A 500 Pound Word
When you talk about religion, it's a 500-pound word. Religion has become something heavy, but I don't believe religion is heavy. I believe that it's joy. Religion is not the sandbags, it's the gas balloons that raise us up.
It's not the sandbags that hold us down. To me, religion gets in the way of God many times with ritual. God wants relationship, not ritual. And he wants love, not laws. He wants righteousness. He wants it to be in our lives, a part of our lives, and not just something we go through. I think joy has a big part in religion. In the Bible it says, "Raise your voices in a joyful noise." You know, dance, dance before me.
Mike Thaler, "Bible Stories to Tickle Your Soul," The Door, January-February 2001, 5.
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With or Without People?
A second grader once asked his teacher how much the earth weighed. The teacher looked up the answer in an Encyclopedia. "Six thousand million, million tons," she answered. The little boy thought for a minute and then asked, "Is that with or without people?" Viewed from one perspective, it might very well seem that people don't really matter very much. After all, we are but microscopic inhabitants of a tiny planet orbiting a relatively obscure star in a small galaxy among the billions and billions of stars and galaxies that make up creation. Yet the God of creation has counted the very hairs of our heads. Wow! What a magnificent picture of God.
King Duncan, The Love of a Father, www.Sermons.com
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The Importance of Rooftops in Jesus' Day
Rooftops were places of great activity in Bible times. The high, open, flat surfaces were perfect for winnowing chaff from grain, drying fruit, storing grain, nuts, and fruit, and sun-bleaching laundry.
Rooftops were also household gathering places because so much work was done there, and they were sleeping places on the hot nights of summer.
But rooftops, because of their height, their openness, and frequent assemblies of people, rooftops were great places from which to shout the news.
Staff, www.Sermons.com
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Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous,
teach me to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.
St. Ignatius of Loyola
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The Work of the Righteous
In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman recounts a story of an American soldier in Vietnam. His platoon was hunkered down in the rice paddies locked into the heat of a firefight with the Vietcong.
The rice fields in Vietnamare often separated by an earthen beam, and on this day, a line of six Buddhist monks started walking along the elevated beam separating the field where the American soldiers lay hugging the ground and the field where the Vietcong were also crouched in battle.
The monks walked directly toward the line of fire, calmly and steadily. They did not look to the left or to the right, they just kept walking. The soldier reported, "It was really strange because nobody shot at 'em. And after they walked over the beam, suddenly all the fight was out of me. It just didn't feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not that day. It must have been that way for everybody, because everybody quit. We just stopped fighting."
Of course, I cannot say what any of us are called to do right now. I can only say that anyone who chooses to walk with God may well be completely out of step with the expectations of the office, the neighborhood or the family. Sometimes, it seems, God's people are called to walk right through the field of fire, faithfully, sacrificially, loyally, doing what we have been called to do.
Roger Ray, When God Won't Be Nice
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Not Peace, But a Sword
A young man from India was brought up in a Hindu household. A very strict one, in fact. Due to a set of circumstances, this man came in contact with Christians. And he was of course repelled by these people. But gradually he realized that what they said was true. In these people, he saw Jesus revealed, and he came to see that he was a sinner who needed a Savior, and that Jesus had died on the cross to save him, and that he must give his life to Jesus. Like millions and billions before him, he fell down helpless before the cross, and repented on his sin.
When he told his parents he was to be baptized as a Christian, they were appalled, horrified, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he went ahead and became a Christian, he would never see them again. On the day of his baptism, his parents, brothers and sisters, and all his extended family held a funeral for him. And, up until the day I spoke to him, he also had never again seen his family.
When I asked the man would he do it all again, he said, of course he would.
He would hate to go through the pain again. Yes, he missed his family. But go back? Never! Any cost, any pain was worth it, just to be by Jesus' side. In his joys, in his sorrows, in his laughing and in his crying, Jesus was always there. To know Jesus - to follow Jesus - to sit at His feet, to take up his cross and walk with Him - to climb the mountains with Him - to walk the valleys with Him - this was his life. There was no other. He said, with a twinkle in his eye, and also with a tear, that he prayed daily for all his family to come to know Jesus too.
Ken Shillito, The Cost
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Chrysostom's Commitment
Chrysostom was the patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century. One of the stories surrounding this faithful witness concerns the occasion when the Roman emperor had him arrested and charged with being a Christian. If Chrysostom did not renounce Christ, then the emperor would have this Christian leader banished from the kingdom. Chrysostom responded to the threat by saying that the emperor could not do so, “because the whole world is my Father’s kingdom.” “Then,” replied the emperor, “I will take away your life.” To which Chrysostom said, “You cannot, for my life is hid with Christ in God.” Next threatened with the loss of his treasure, this saint replied, “You cannot, for my treasure is in heaven where my heart is.” The emperor made one last effort: “Then I will drive you away from here and you shall have no friend left.” But again Chrysostom responded, “You cannot, for I have one Friend from whom you can never separate me. I defy you for you can do me no harm.”
Living as we do in our Western, religiously-tolerant society, we may never face a crucial moment such as Chrysostom 16 centuries ago. We do, however, face similar temptations to renounce our faith, ignore our commitments, or compromise our loyalties. We will be tempted to deny we ever heard of the one called Jesus the Christ. We will be enticed to deny his power over our lives with phrases like: “Come on, everyone else is!” or “It will be fun, and no one will ever know.” We are daily forced to choose between the easy way, the quick fix and the promise of glamour and the way of Christ. Those who choose to acknowledge Christ must do so not just with lips but also with hearts and minds.
Larry M. Goodpaster, Like a Breath of Fresh Air, CSS Publishing Company
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Your Hair
The average woman with a thick head of hair will lose up to 100 hairs a day.
Such losses are increased somewhat if the hair is long and becomes entangled in the brush or comb. The average man, shaving every day, removes a beard about one sixty-fourth (1/64) of an inch in length. This means that between the ages of 20 and 65, he removes 23 feet of beard! And to think God keeps track of all that hair!
bibleline.org, "Hair," Children's Bible Ministry.
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A Choice for Righteousness and Not Evil
During the Second World War Dr. Ernest Gordon, later Chaplain of Princeton University, was a prisoner of war in Thailand. In his book, Through the Valley of the Kwai he reflects on the difference between two Christmas seasons he spent in prison. He says that in Christmas 1942 there were thousands of American soldiers in that prison who robbed the sick among them, mistreated one another, and did not care whether the other prisoners lived or died.
During the following year, a healthy American soldier began giving his food to a sick buddy to help him get well. In time the sick prisoner recovered, but the buddy who had given him food died of malnutrition. The story of the man who sacrificed his life to save a buddy made the rounds of the camp. Some of the prisoners remarked that he was a lot like Christ. Some of the soldiers began to recall passages from the Bible they had learned years earlier under far different circumstances. One of the passages stated, "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Some who were Christians took heart and began to witness to other men. The prisoners began to ask about Christ and to meet for Bible study. When they began to know Christ as Lord the entire atmosphere in the camp changed from despair and desperation to hope and compassion. When Christmas of 1943 arrived, Dr. Gordon said, 2000 prisoners assembled for worship. They sang carols and someone read the story of the birth of Jesus from a Gospel account. Much more was different. In spite of their hunger, prisoners who were well shared food with the sick to help them gain strength faster. They cared for one another. They agreed that the difference came about because of faith in Christ and people who lived his love in the midst of unloving circumstances. The choices they made were for righteousness and not evil.
Wayne Peterson, Critical Choices
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Living with the Pain
Suffering and pain are integral to life's experience but they need not humiliate, defeat, and destroy us! A Detroit News article some years ago carried the story of Kirk Gibson during his glory days with the Tigers. Few really knew the price of pain and agony paid by Gibson for that glory.
According to the article, Kirk Gibson is a baseball player who knows how to live with pain. In 1980, he tore the cartilage in his wrist. Two years later, he had a sore left knee, a strained left calf muscle, and a severe left wrist sprain. In 1983, he was out for knee surgery, and in 1985 he required 17 stitches after getting hit in the mouth with a wild pitch. In addition, he bruised a hamstring muscle, injured his right heel, and suffered a sore left ankle. His worst injury involved severe ligament damage to his ankle in 1986, a year predicted to be his best. When asked about pain, Gibson was quoted as saying, "There are pluses and minuses in everything we do in life. But the pluses for my career, myself, and my family make it worth it. It's the path I chose."
Carlyle Fielding Stewart, III, Joy Songs, Trumpet Blasts, and Hallelujah Shouts, CSS Publishing Company
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Diet Soft Drink Religion
One of the things which has rather surprised the people who study church growth is that many of the churches which are really booming are the ones which ask the most of their members. While I hear a lot about making the church accessible and making worship a "low threshold" experience, what we are seeing is that some people are catching on to the fact that symbolic religion is about as nutritious as a caffeine free diet soft drink... it's cold, it's carbonated, and it's sweet... but there is nothing there.... on a steady diet of it, you will die of starvation.
Roger Ray, When God Won't Be Nice
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Renouncing Everything
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army during World War II. He was decorated for bravery and rose to the rank of captain. In 1945, while serving on the German front, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in letters to a friend and was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. After completing his prison sentence, Solzhenitsyn was exiled to Kazakhstan, but after Stalin's death his position improved, and his citizenship was restored in 1956. His first novels described how grim life could be in the labor-camp system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was permitted publication in 1962 as a result of the personal intervention of Nikita Khrushchev. In subsequent years, however, he was considered to be a dangerous and hostile critic of the soviet system. He was again arrested and imprisoned. He was accused of treason, stripped of his citizenship, and forcibly deported to the West. His deportation in 1974 allowed him to personally accept the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he had been awarded four years earlier.
In his book The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn documents the operation of the oppressive Soviet totalitarian system from 1918 to 1956 by using personal interviews and reminiscences from his time in the camps. He tells how prisoners were able to withstand abuse and interrogation even when they had done nothing wrong. This is a small section from the book.
How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared? What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?
From the moment you go in prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die - now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me."
Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.
Untitled sermon by Steven P. Loy
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The Ministry of Hospitality
Bob Edmunds, my former colleague in the church where I used to serve in Elmira, New York, tells a story of what it feels like to be denied hospitality. He and his family were vacationing one summer and decided to worship at a prominent church in the Washington D. C. area. Apparently this church had quite a reputation for the quality of their preaching and corporate worship. The reputation held up, according to Bob and Susan's standards. And believe me, they have rather high ones. The sermon was riveting and the music, inspiring. That much did not disappoint them. But the lack of hospitality did.
From the moment they arrived at that church to the time they left, not one person spoke to them - except for the pastor who made a feeble attempt on their way out the door. No one directed them to the nursery. They had to find it themselves. No one invited them to the fellowship hall for coffee and refreshments afterwards. They had to find it themselves. In fact Bob deliberately stood underneath the huge chandelier in the center of that spacious hall for at least five minutes - gazing up at it and looking as conspicuous as possible. But no one came up to him or introduced themselves to him.
"We felt as though we were invisible," Bob says. "No one noticed that we were even there. I don't care how good the preaching and music were. Nothing could have made up for their lack of hospitality. That church was as cold and lifeless as a corpse."
J. Scott Miller, The Ministry of Hospitality
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The Messiah Is Among You
There was a famous monastery which had fallen on very hard times. Formerly its many buildings were filled with young monks, and its huge chapel resounded with the singing of the choir. But now it was deserted. People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer. A handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters and praised God with heavy hearts.
On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a tiny hut. He would come there from time to time to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him, but whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk: "The rabbi walks in the woods." And, for as long as he was there, the monks would feel sustained by his prayerful presence.
One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and open his heart to him. So, after the morning Eucharist, he set out through the woods. As he approached the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched in welcome. It was as though he had been waiting there for some time. The two embraced like long-lost brothers. Then they stepped back and just stood there, smiling at one another with smiles their faces could hardly contain.
After a while, the rabbi motioned the abbot to enter. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with the Scriptures open on it. They sat there for a moment, in the presence of the Book. Then the rabbi began to cry. The abbot could not contain himself. He covered his face with his hands and began to cry, too. For the first time in his life, he cried his heart out. The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their sobs and moistening the wood of the table with their tears.
After the tears had ceased to flow and all was quiet again, the rabbi lifted his head. "You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts," he said. "You have come to ask a teaching of me. I will give you a teaching, but you can only repeat it once. After that, no one must ever say it aloud again."
The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said, "The Messiah is among you." For a while, all was silent. Then the rabbi said, "Now you must go." The abbot left without ever looking back.
The next morning, the abbot called his monks together in the chapter room. He told them that he had received a teaching from the rabbi who walks in the woods, and that this teaching was never again to be spoken aloud. Then he looked at each of his brothers and said, "The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah."
The monks were startled by this saying. "What could it mean?" they asked themselves. "Is brother John the Messiah? No, he's too old and crotchety. Is brother Thomas? No, he's too stubborn and set in his ways. Am I the Messiah? What could this possibly mean?" They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi's teaching. But no one ever mentioned it again.
As time went by, though, something unusual began to happen at the monastery. The monks began to treat one another with a very special reverence. There was a gentle, wholehearted, human quality about them now which was hard to describe, but easy to notice. They lived with one another as brothers who had finally found something. And yet, they prayed over the Scriptures together as those who were still looking for something. Visitors found themselves deeply moved by the genuine caring and sharing that went on among the brothers. Before long, people were again coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of these monks. And young men were asking, once again, to become part of the community.
In those days, the rabbi no longer walked in the woods. His hut had fallen into ruins. But somehow or other, the older monks who had taken his teaching to heart still felt sustained by his prayerful presence.
Adapted from "The Rabbi's Gift" in Stories for the Journey by William White
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The Earliest Signs of Civilization
The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked this question: What was the earliest sign of civilization in any given culture? He expected the answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone. Her answer was "a healed femur." The femur, of course, is the leg bone below the knee. Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person's hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion, she said, is the first sign of civilization. I would contend that it is also the first sign of the work of Christ in the life of a Christian.
Brett Blair, www.Sermons.com
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No Higher Duty
Henri Nouwen, the great spiritual writer was going to a monastery for a retreat. The monks observed vows of silence and the retreat was to be meditative and prayerful. Nouwen was delayed and was late getting to the monastery on that miserable, rainy night. He rang the bell, well after bedtime, and was met at the door by one of the brothers. The brother warmly greeted him, took his wet coat, brought him to the kitchen and made him a cup of tea. They chatted in the late night hours and Nouwen began to relax and feel ready for the retreat. But he knew this monk was supposed to observe silence, so he finally asked him, "Why are you willing to sit and talk with me?" The monk replied "Of all the duties of the Christian faith and the rules of my order, none is higher than hospitality."
J. Burton Williams, The Reward of a Disciple
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A New Social Order
By the fourth century, the churches in Rome were feeding an estimated 20,000 poor people each week. The church at that time presented to the world a visible alternative to the prevailing social order. As Georges Florovsky has written in "Empire and Desert: Antinomies of Christian History":
Christianity entered human history as a new social order or, rather, a new social dimension. From the very beginning, Christianity was not primarily a "doctrine," but exactly a "community." There was not only a "message" to be proclaimed and delivered and "Good News" to be declared, but there was, precisely, a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, "fellowship" ("koinonia") was the basic category of Christian existence.
Jay M. Terbush, The Significance of the Insignificant
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Who's In Charge Here?
A colleague shared about a church he served in Tennessee where an eccentric and flamboyant elder impressed him with her intense commitment to the faith. She did not have a pietistic bone in her body, but her devotion was nonetheless clear and articulate. One evening at a dinner party in her home we were animatedly discussing some theological idea. In the midst of the give and take her teenage daughter, probably frustrated with all of the high-blown discussion of religion, asked, "Mother, you talk about religion all the time. Why are you so religious anyway?" This query brought a loud hush to the dining table. Her mother paused dramatically, pushed her chair back from the table, stood and responded, "Every morning before you are awake, I rise and walk into the living room. I lift my arms and ask, `Who's in charge here?' The answer always comes back: `Not you!' That's why I am religious. Because I am not in charge!" Religious life begins with the realization that we are not in charge, and from there we can proceed to align ourselves to the One who is in charge. Jesus is declaring to the disciples: Go into the world knowing who is in charge and what it will mean to act upon that knowledge!
Jesus is clear, however, that to act on that knowledge is not always easy.
Author Unknown
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He Was a Stranger and I Took Him In
The story is told of a Kansan who owned a general store. He was a well-intending man who made a habit of offering a verse of Scripture whenever anyone purchased something from him. The group of people who sat around the store in this rural area enjoyed the exchanges, because some of the purchases challenged the imagination.
One winter day a Texan stopped in, wanting to buy a blanket for his horse. The locals knew that the store stocked two types of blankets. One sold for $60, and the expensive one cost $89.95.He showed him the first. "No, that's not good enough. I need something warmer for my horse." He showed him the second blanket for $89.95. "That's not good enough, either. Don't you understand? This is for my horse, and nothing's too good for my horse. Now show me your most expensive blanket!"
The store became very quiet as the storekeeper reached under the counter to the $89.95 stock, pulled out a plaid one, and spread it on the counter with great finesse. "This is our finest and the only one I have. Colorfast, 100 percent wool, with a very tight weave. It sells for $250."
“Now you are talking. I'll take it." He counted out the money, folded the blanket, and left with a big grin on his face. As the shopkeeper opened the cash drawer and carefully counted the money, he said, "Matthew 25:35, He was a stranger and I took him in."
Hospitality, reaching out with a cup of cold water, is hard to find.
Traditional
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Making Friends Out of Strangers
You and I tend to offer hospitality to only a limited number of people--persons whom we already know, mostly relatives and a few close friends. But, in Abraham's time, hospitality was extended to whomever needed it--strangers and acquaintances alike. In fact, in its original form, "hospitality" combines two separate words--one meaning friend and the other meaning stranger. So, from the beginning of its usage, hospitality has carried with it the idea of making friends out of strangers.
James W. Cox, The Minister's Manual, Harper, 1994, 109
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Hospitality versus Entertaining
Karen Mains distinguishes between Hospitality and Entertaining: Entertaining says, "I want to impress you with my home, my clever decorating, my cooking." Hospitality, seeking to minister, says, "This home is a gift from my Master. I use it as he desires." Hospitality aims to serve.
Entertaining puts things before people. "As soon as I get the house finished, the living room decorated, my house cleaning done--then I will start inviting people." Hospitality puts people first. "No furniture--we'll eat on the floor! The decorating may never get done--you come anyway. The house is a mess--but you are friends--come home with us."
Entertaining subtly declares, "This home is mine, an expression of my personality. Look, please, and admire." Hospitality whispers, "What is mine is yours."
Karen Mains, Open Heart, Open Home, Cook, 1976
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Rewards
Do not be worn out by the labors which you have undertaken for My sake, and do not let tribulations ever cast you down. Instead, let My promise strengthen and comfort you under every circumstance. I am well able to reward you above all measure and degree. You shall not toil here long nor always be oppressed with griefs. A time will come when all labor and trouble will cease. Labor faithfully in My vineyard; I will be thy recompense. Life everlasting is worth all these conflict, and greater than these. Are not all plentiful labors to be endured for the sake of life eternal? Lift your face therefore to heaven; behold I and all My saints with me--who in this world had great conflicts--are now comforted, now rejoicing, now secure, now at rest, and shall remain with Me everlastingly in the kingdom of My father.
Thomas a Kempis
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Sent to the Lost Sheep
A number of years ago I heard the story of a country preacher who asked his new little rural congregation to obey the call of Christ Jesus. He gave them all index cards in worship and asked them to write down the names of every family member, every neighbor, and every co-worker they knew that didn’t go to church anywhere. He stopped long enough for them to do just that in worship. When they got through writing, they had identified 1200 names.
Then the preacher asked them to begin to pray for all the people on their card – to place it on the refrigerator or in their Bible as a prominent reminder to pray daily for these people. Then he asked them to invite the people to come to worship, and keep inviting, and keep inviting, and keep inviting. That dying little church suddenly had new life, because the disciples in that little church had been sent to the lost sheep of their community!
The Church is not about us. It’s about God. God wants to save us from ourselves. God knows who among us have been possessed by unclean spirits (somebody is going to all those so-called adult video stores and so-called gentlemen’s clubs; somebody is frequenting those prostitutes that keep getting arrested). God knows who is sick and what’s ailing them. God knows who is dead in their faith and damned near close to death in their bodies. God knows who is a modern-day leper and needs to be healed. God knows what kind of demons have hold of lives, and God wants to save people from hellish lives and from hell itself. And you may have been sleepwalking through worship so long that you don’t know that God cares about all that stuff!
Samuel Zumwalt, Scattered Reign
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Bridges of Friendship
Joseph Aldrich wrote a book several years ago entitled, "Lifestyle Evangelism." His central point is that Christian people need to build bridges of friendship with people who are without a spiritual home. It is across these "bridges" that people can be gently nudged towards the love of God and the support of a caring Christian fellowship.
It is one thing to see the harvest. And it is important to see it. It is another thing to care about the harvest. And it is important to care about the harvest. It is something else entirely to go into the harvest. Seeing and caring can be done from a distance - but entering into the harvest is to make a commitment to join with Christ is solving God's biggest problem. Harvesting can not be done from a distance. God set the model for harvesting in the incarnation of Christ. As God came in the flesh through Jesus Christ to stand next to us and bear us up - so also we are called to enter the harvest and bear others up to the love of God.
Aldrich in his book suggests that the church has developed a style whereby we "call out to the harvest" to come in and be harvested. It is the opposite of how Jesus worked. Jesus left the splendor of heaven for the dreariness of the world. He came to where the harvest was and carefully and lovingly reaped the harvest. Then he said to his closest followers, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you!" [John 20:21]
John Jewell, God’s Biggest Problem
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Mr. Eternity
Perhaps you have heard of the man known as Mr. Eternity who lived in Australia a few years ago. Early in life he was an alcoholic derelict who before reaching middle age was converted through a rescue mission and later himself became a street-corner evangelist, Shortly after his conversion, he heard a sermon entitled "Echoes of Eternity." He was so captivated by the importance of the word "eternity" that he began using his free time to spread the one-word message across Sidney. "Eternity went ringing through my brain. Even though I could scarcely write my own name, I felt the divine urge to write this word."
So, fifty times a day for over thirty years, he wrote "eternity" on the sidewalks of Sidney, usually in the early morning, with white chalk and with faultless script. When he passed away, the Sidney morning newspaper carried a story of this unusual man who had chalked "eternity" on the city streets over half a million times in that metropolis of significant population. The thought of eternity does impress upon us the seriousness with which we must regard our soul.
Dennis Kastens, Echoes of Eternity, CSS Publishing Company
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A Paradoxical Faith
The Christian faith is a strange and paradoxical faith. A paradox is something that seems illogical and inimical to common sense and customary experience. A paradox is something which seems contradictory to the usual, normative patterns of interpretation and understanding. It seems untrue but is true. For example, it is a paradox that America, the richest nation in the world, is the world's greatest debtor. It is a paradox that 78 percent of all professing and confessing Christians never read the Bible; a paradox that 90 percent of all Christians never have family prayer; a paradox that the United Methodist Church, which began as a Holy Ghost, Spirit-filled movement, is today not known for its spiritual fervor. It is a paradox that after all the centuries of persecution and hardship, where dictators, spectators, and agitators have heaped untold scorn on the people of God, the Christian faith is still alive and well. Anything which seems out of character or pattern with the usual flow of things is a paradox. It is quite paradoxical that women, who were the mainstays of Jesus' movement, are often spiritually taken for granted and rejected, but today there are more women in our seminaries than men!
Carlyle Fielding Stewart, III, Joy Songs, Trumpet Blasts, and Hallelujah Shouts, CSS Publishing Company
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God Is Like a Father
For many of us the injustice of this world, combined with the love of the Father, is the best assurance we have of a world beyond this one. Someday, somehow, somewhere accounts must be settled. In Marjorie Rawling's beautiful novel, The Yearling, set in rural Florida, there is a scene in which friends and family gather around the grave of a little handicapped boy named Fodderwing. There was no minister present so one of the men of the community offered up this simple but moving prayer: "Almighty God, it ain't right for us to say what is right. But if we had been making this boy we would never have made him with his back bent and his legs crooked. We would have made him straight and tall like his brothers. But somehow you made it up to him. You gave him a way with critters. It comforts us to know that he is in a place where his being bent doesn't matter no more. We would like to think that you have taken that bent back and those crooked legs and straightened them. And Almighty God, if it ain't asking too much, we pray that you will give him some critters to play with maybe a few redbirds and a squirrel or two. Thy will be done. Amen."
I don't know what heaven will be like. But I know what God is like. He is like a Father who notices a little sparrow fall from the sky and cares for us much, much more than he cares for sparrows. That means even though we still must face obstacles and crises, we do not face them alone, and someday, somehow all that which is hurtful will be turned into that which is helpful, and we shall live with joy in the Father's house forever.King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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FATHER'S DAY ILLUSTRATIONS
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Sermon Opener - Sowing Good Seed – Mark 4:26-29
Today we honor our fathers. And that's good. Dads don't get much respect nowadays. A doting father used to sing his little children to sleep. He even learned a few lullabies to lend some variety to the task. This was something he could do at night to help his wife out. And he kept up this task until one night he overheard his four-year-old give her younger sibling this advice, "If you pretend you're asleep," she said, "he stops." That was the end of the lullabies.
Garrison Keillor, on his "Writer’s Almanac" on National Public Radio said that Father's Day goes back "to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother's Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition, too. So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father's birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father's Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother's Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father's Day, not until 1972. Mother's Day is still the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants and long distance phone companies. Father's Day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.
"It was Strindberg who said, ‘That is the thankless position of the father in the family the provider for all and the enemy of all.' Oscar Wilde said, ‘Fathers should neither be seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.'" (1)
In our lesson from Mark, Jesus is describing the kingdom of God: "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how . . ."
Now Jesus is not talking about fatherhood in this passage, but isn't this the very first area in which we participate in the coming of God's kingdom to earth? It is in the raising of our children. Raising good children is like scattering seed upon the ground….
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Sermon Opener – The Forgiving Father - Luke 15:11-32
I heard a minister say one time that in his younger days, when his children were small, he would have family meetings. These meetings were to discuss chores, and family matters, trips, etc. Yet, he admitted, when he would call these meetings, the expression on his children’s faces would usually be: “what have we done wrong, now.” Finally, he said, my wife pointed out to me that the tone in my voice when I called these meetings was very serious, the same tone that he used when he disciplined his children. Thus, they responded with apprehension.
I have thought about that, and I wonder if that is not similar to the response that many people have when they have a meeting with God. They come to him with the feeling: Well, we must really be in trouble now. Despite all of the talk that we do in the church about how God loves us, I get the distinct impression that many feel that God just puts up with them. I have even talked with some people over the years who drew a distinction between Christ’s love and God’s attitude. They see Christ as the one who holds back the wrath of an angry God. The impression is that, if it were not for Christ, God would love to get his hands on us.
Some would not go that far. They would say: Oh, I know that God loves me, but I must candidly confess that he probably doesn’t like me too much. Maybe for some people their feelings go back to the use of the word father. I have had many people comment to me over the years in a casual, but often revealing way, how stern their father was with them. Thus, it is difficult for them to envision a heavenly father that would be anything but strict.
Well, this problem is certainly nothing new. The Jews dealt with it many centuries ago. They believed that God would not tolerate sin. They developed a system where people were judged by the degree of their sin, the worse the sin the worse off you were with God. This, of course, left the sinner with the feeling that God totally despised them. In addition, there were people whose jobs were so ceremonially unclean that they too were considered unacceptable. The tax collector, the butcher, and even the shepherds were told they were too unclean to approach God.
And so, in Jesus’ day, there was, spiritually speaking, the haves and the have-nots. The haves perceived themselves as having God’s love, and the have-nots believed that they were quite beyond it. To change this view, Jesus told the story of the prodigal son.
I have preached many sermons on this parable but rarely during my ministry, or at least as far as I recall, I have never preached this story from the vantage point of the father…
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Priceless Scribbles
Rev. Richard Fairchild tells about a story that appeared years ago in the Christian Reader. It was called “Priceless Scribbles.” It concerns a father who touched his child’s life in an unexpected way. A young boy watched as his father walked into the living room. The boy noticed that his younger brother, John, began to cower slightly as his father entered. The older boy sensed that John had done something wrong. Then he saw from a distance what his brother had done. The younger boy had opened his father’s brand new hymnal and scribbled all over the first page with a pen.
Staring at their father fearfully, both brothers waited for John’s punishment. Their father picked up his prized hymnal, looked at it carefully and then sat down, without saying a word. Books were precious to him; he was a minister with several academic degrees. For him, books were knowledge. What he did next was remarkable, says the author of this story. Instead of punishing his brother, instead of scolding, or yelling, his father took the pen from the little boy’s hand, and then wrote in the book himself, alongside the scribbles that John had made. Here is what that father wrote: “John’s work, 1959, age 2. How many times have I looked into your beautiful face and into your warm, alert eyes looking up at me and thanked God for the one who has now scribbled in my new hymnal. You have made the book sacred, as have your brother and sister to so much of my life.”
“Wow,” thought the older brother, “This is punishment?” The author of the story, now an adult, goes on to say how that hymnal became a treasured family possession, how it was tangible proof that their parents loved them, how it taught the lesson that what really matters is people, not objects; patience, not judgment; love, not anger.
Richard Fairchild, adapted by King Duncan
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The Patience of a Father
I remember reading about a guy who stopped in the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a couple of items for his wife. He wandered around aimlessly for a while searching out the needed groceries. As is often the case in the grocery store, he kept passing this same shopper in almost every aisle. It was another father trying to shop with a totally uncooperative three year old boy in the cart.
The first time they passed, the three year old was asking over and over for a candy bar. Our observer couldn't hear the entire conversation. He just heard Dad say, "Now, Billy, this won't take long." As they passed in the nest aisle, the 3-year-old's pleas had increased several octaves. Now Dad was quietly saying, "Billy, just calm down. We will be done in a minute."
When they passed near the dairy case, the kid was screaming uncontrollably. Dad was still keeping his cool. In a very low voice he was saying, "Billy, settle down. We are almost out of here." The Dad and his son reached the check out counter just ahead of our observer. He still gave no evidence of losing control. The boy was screaming and kicking. Dad was very calmly saying over and over, "Billy, we will be in the car in just a minute and then everything will be OK."
The bystander was impressed beyond words. After paying for his groceries, he hurried to catch up with this amazing example of patience and self-control just in time to hear him say again, "Billy, we're done. It's going to be OK." He tapped the patient father on the shoulder and said, "Sir, I couldn't help but watch how you handled little Billy. You were amazing."
Dad replied, "His name is Wesley. I'm Billy!"
Roger W. Thomas, A Father's Faith
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Priorities
A first-grader asked his mother why his Dad brought home a briefcase full of material each night. She explained that he had so much work to do that he couldn't get it all done at the office. The youngster pondered this soberly, then asked, "Well, why don't they put him in a slower group."
Parents, remember this. If you can't say no to some claims, your life will drip away like a leaky faucet. You won't make much of a splash anywhere.
Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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What Are You Passing On?
At the first church that I pastored, I had the job of mixing feed to supplement my income. For a period of about two weeks, each day that I came home from work, my two boys, ages 2 and 3 would look at me, smile, and would say, "Boy, dad, you sure are dusty!" I would reply, "Yes, I sure am dusty." Then I would get cleaned up.
I didn't think too much of this until I was washing my car and saw my oldest son doing something very strange. He was picking up the gravel and stones that were in our drive and rubbing them into his pants. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He replied, "I want to be dusty like you dad!"
I realized that if a child would look up to his father for being dusty and want to copy his father, a child could look up to his father and follow him for anything. What are you passing on to your son?
Jerry L. Steen
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Is God Like Daddy?
Think of a four-year-old coming home one Sunday after a lesson that taught about God as our Heavenly Father. Sound theology would quickly note that God is neither male nor female, but youngsters do not concern themselves with theological niceties. A four-year-old hears "Father;" the only father he knows anything about is the one that lives with him and says, "Pass the biscuits, please;" so he asks..."Is God like Daddy?" Wow! What a heavy load! But a good load to consider on Fathers' Day...and a good one to consider when we realize that what Daddy is can become a role model for our children's concept of God.
David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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This Is Not a Race
Clovis Chappell, a great preacher of a previous generation, used to tell the story of two paddleboat steamers. They left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the River to New Orleans. As they traveled side by side, crew members made disparaging remarks about the slowness of the other boat. Words were exchanged. Challenges were made.
And the race began. The competition was keen as the boats roared down the Mississippi. One boat began falling behind. Not enough fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race. As the boat dropped back, an enterprising crew member took some of the ship's cargo and tossed it into the ovens. Their boat began to catch up, so they made fuel out of more and more cargo. They finally won the race, but in the process they burned their cargo, the very material they had been hired to transport.
Parents, our primary mission is not to win a rat race, but to faithfully care for those persons entrusted to us, especially our children.
Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons, www.eSermons.com
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Someone Who Loves You
In his book, Disappointment with God, writer Philip Yancey relates a touching story from his own life. One time on a visit to his mother--who had been widowed years earlier, in the month of Philip's first birthday--they spent the afternoon together looking through a box of old photos. A certain picture of him as an eight-month-old baby caught his eye. Tattered and bent, it looked too banged up to be worth keeping, so he asked her why, with so many other better pictures of him at the same age, she had kept this one.
Yancey writes, "My mother explained to me that she had kept the photo as a memento, because during my father's illness it had been fastened to his iron lung." During the last four months of his life, Yancey's father lay on his back, completely paralyzed by polio at the age of twenty-four, encased from the neck down in a huge, cylindrical breathing unit. With his two young sons banned from the hospital due to the severity of his illness, he had asked his wife for pictures of her and their two boys. Because he was unable to move even his head, the photos had to be jammed between metal knobs so that they hung within view above him--the only thing he could see. The last four months of his life were spent looking at the faces he loved.
Philip Yancey writes, "I have often thought of that crumpled photo, for it is one of the few links connecting me to the stranger who was my father. Someone I have no memory of, no sensory knowledge of, spent all day, every day thinking of me, devoting himself to me, loving me . . . The emotions I felt when my mother showed me the crumpled photo were the very same emotions I felt that February night in a college dorm room when I first believed in a God of love. Someone is there, I realized. Someone is there who loves me. It was a startling feeling of wild hope, a feeling so new and overwhelming that it seemed fully worth risking my life on."
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Not Now, Honey
I am going to read a quote to you first and then tell you who said it: A small child waits with impatience the arrival home of a parent. She wishes to relate some sandbox experience. She is excited to share the thrill that she has known that day. The time comes; the parent arrives. Beaten down by the stresses of the workplace the parent often replies: "Not know, honey, I'm busy, go watch television." The most often spoken words in the American household today are the words: go watch television. If not now, when? Later. But later never comes for many and the parent fails to communicate at the very earliest of ages. We give her designer clothes and computer toys, but we do not give her what she wants the most, which is our time. Now, she is fifteen and has a glassy look in her eyes. Honey, do we need to sit down and talk? Too late. Love has passed by.
The person who wrote these words was Robert Keeshan, better known to America as Captain Kangaroo.
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Involved Dads
According to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a father's involvement with a child increases the child's IQ, the child's motivation to learn, and the child's self-confidence. In addition, children with involved dads are more likely to develop a sense of humor as well as an "inner excitement."
Victor Parachin, "The Fine Art of Good Fathering," Herald of Holiness, February 1995, pp. 32-33.
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Mark Twain's Father
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
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Don't Eat the Forbidden Fruit
Whenever your kids are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even God's omnipotence didn't extend to God's kids. After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve. And the first thing he said was:
"Don't."
"Don't what?" Adam replied
"Don't eat the forbidden fruit." God said.
"Forbidden fruit? We got forbidden fruit?
Hey Eve! We got forbidden fruit!"
"No way!"
"Yes way!"
"DON'T EAT THAT FRUIT!" Said God.
"Why?"
"Because I am your Father and I said so!" said God, wondering why he hadn't stopped after making elephants.
A few minutes later God saw his kids having an apple break and was angry.
Didn't I tell you not to the fruit?" the First Parent asked.
"Uh huh," Adam replied.
"Then why did you?"
"I dunno," Eve answered.
"She started it!" Adam said.
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did NOT!"
Having had it with the two of them, God's punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus, the pattern was set and it has never been changed.
Morgan Murray
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What Does A Father Do?
I received a letter from a single mother who had raised a son who was about to become a dad. Since he had no recollection of his own father, her question to me was "What do I tell him a father does?"
When my dad died in my ninth year, I, too, was raised by my mother, giving rise to the same question, "What do fathers do?" As far as I could observe, they brought around the car when it rained so everyone else could stay dry.
They always took the family pictures, which is why they were never in them. They carved turkeys on Thanksgiving, kept the car gassed up, weren't afraid to go into the basement, mowed the lawn, and tightened the clothesline to keep it from sagging.
It wasn't until my husband and I had children that I was able to observe firsthand what a father contributed to a child's life. What did he do to deserve his children's respect? He rarely fed them, did anything about their sagging diapers, wiped their noses or behinds, played ball, or bonded with them under the hoods of their cars.
What did he do?
He threw them higher than his head until they were weak from laughter. He cast the deciding vote on the puppy debate. He listened more than he talked. He let them make mistakes. He allowed them to fall from their first two-wheeler without having a heart attack. He read a newspaper while they were trying to parallel park a car for the first time in preparation for their driving test.
If I had to tell someone's son what a father really does that is important, it would be that he shows up for the job in good times and bad times. He's a man who is constantly being observed by his children. They learn from him how to handle adversity, anger, disappointment and success.
He won't laugh at their dreams no matter how impossible they might seem. He will dig out at 1 a.m. when one of his children runs out of gas. He will make unpopular decisions and stand by them. When he is wrong and makes a mistake, he will admit it. He sets the tone for how family members treat one another, members of the opposite sex and people who are different than they are. By example, he can instill a desire to give something back to the community when its needs are greater than theirs.
But mostly, a good father involves himself in his kids' lives. The more responsibility he has for a child, the harder it is to walk out of his life.
A father has the potential to be a powerful force in the life of a child. Grab it! Maybe you'll get a greeting card for your efforts. Maybe not. But it's steady work.
Erma Bombeck, Field Enterprises
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FATHER'S DAY: A TRIBUTE
Today is Father's Day. A day of cologne. A day of hugs, new neckties, long-distance phone calls, and Hallmark cards.
Today is my first Father's Day without a father. For thirty-one years I had one. I had one of the best. But now he's gone. He's buried under an oak tree in a west Texas cemetery. Even though he's gone, his presence is very near--especially today.
It seems strange that he isn't here. I guess that's because he was never gone. He was always close by. Always available. Always present. His words were nothing novel. His achievements, though admirable, were nothing extraordinary.
But his presence was.
Like a warm fireplace in a large house, he was a source of comfort. Like a sturdy porch swing or a big-branched elm in the backyard, he could always be found...and leaned upon.
During the turbulent years of my adolescence, Dad was one part of my life that was predictable. Girl friends came and girl friends went, but Dad was there. Football season turned into baseball season and turned into football season again and Dad was always there. Summer vacation, Homecoming dates, algebra, first car, driveway basketball--they all had one thing in common: his presence.
And because he was there life went smoothly. The car always ran, the bills got paid, and the lawn stayed mowed. Because he was there, the laughter was fresh and the future was secure. Because he was there my growing up was what God intended growing up to be; a storybook scamper through the magic and mystery of the world.
Because he was there we kids never worried about things like income tax, savings accounts, monthly bills, or mortgages. Those were the things on Daddy's desk.
We have lots of family pictures without him. Not because he wasn't there, but because he was always behind the camera.
He made the decisions, broke up the fights, chuckled at Archie Bunker, read the paper every evening, and fixed breakfast on Sundays. He didn't do anything unusual. He only did what dads are supposed to do--be there.
He taught me how to shave and how to pray. He helped me memorize verses for Sunday school and taught me that wrong should be punished and that rightness has its own reward. He modeled the importance of getting up early and staying out of debt. His life expressed the elusive balance between ambition and self-acceptance.
He comes to mind often. When I smell "Old Spice" aftershave, I think of him. When I see a bass boat I see his face. And occasionally, not too often, but occasionally when I hear a good joke, (the kind Red Skelton would tell), I hear him chuckle. He had a copyright chuckle that always came with a wide grin and arched eyebrows.
Daddy never said a word to me about sex or told me his life story. But I knew that if I ever wanted to know, he would tell me. All I had to do was ask. And I knew if I ever needed him, he'd be there.
Like a warm fireplace.
Maybe that's why this Father's Day is a bit chilly. The fire has gone out. The winds of age swallowed the late splendid flame, leaving only golden embers. But there is a strange thing about those embers...stir them a bit and a flame will dance. It will dance only briefly, but it will dance. And it will knock just enough chill out of the air to remind me that he is still...in a special way...very present.
Max Lucado
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The Flip Side of Love
A lot of damage can occur in a family. Parents can be hurt. Children can be hurt. But there is always hope in a home where forgiveness is present. John R. Aurelio, in his book Colors!, gives us a beautiful portrayal of this side of God.
On the sixth day, God created Father Adam and Mother Eve.
On the seventh day, as God was resting, they asked Him if He would give them something special to commemorate their birthday. So God reached into His treasure chest and took out a sacred coin. Written on it was the word "LOVE."
On the eighth day, Father Adam and Mother Eve sinned. As they left the Garden of Eden, they asked God for an assurance that He would not abandon them.
"You have the coin," He told them.
"But, the coin says LOVE," they answered. "We have lost love. How ever will we find it again?"
"Turn it over," God said.
On the other side of the coin was written the word "FORGIVENESS."
Aurelio goes on to say that there is no love without forgiveness and no forgiveness without love. They are the two sides of the same coin.
John R. Aurelio, Colors!, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993, p. 133.
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Bringing the Grain out Strong
“We never know the timber of a man’s soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong.”
It might be the first moment a father holds his child. It might be the first time he has to say ‘no’ to his child. It might be the first time his child refuses to listen and does just what he or she pleases, even though it is dangerous or risky. For every parent, there are countless moments when our children challenge us and force us to feel the responsibility of raising them. We constantly ask ourselves, “Are we up to this task?”
We can ride along in life and think we know ourselves, but the daily challenges and rewards of parenting bring into focus all of our strengths and weaknesses. We hope to react with patience, reason, and love. We sometimes react with impatience, frustration, or fear.
As the love for your children cuts into you and shows what you are really made of, remember Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:16-20)
In our relationship with our children, strive for the grain of your character to show Christ and be the best ambassador for him you can be.
Staff, quote from Freckles, Gene Stratton Porter.
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Truths for Dads
Especially for Father's Day, here is a short list of things that I believe to be true for dads:
That the best way to love our children is to love and respect their mother,
That the best gift we can give our children is a sense of safety and security as they grow up.
I believe that it’s more important to give them our time, not our money, it’s more important to be respected by them than to be liked by them, it’s more important to encourage them in their interests than to require them to share our interests. That means, dads, that if you were a fullback but your son loves the violin, you better learn to love the violin!
And I believe that our responsibility reaches beyond caring for our own children, and Jesus expects us to care for all children, everywhere.
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said “The true test of a society is how it cares for its children.” Taken to its logical extension, it means that we cannot just be proud that OUR kids received a great education when other children receive a poor education. We cannot be satisfied that our children get fully nutritious meals when some children go to be hungry at night. We can be proud that our child has a spacious bedroom, but shouldn’t we also be concerned that 4400 children are homeless in our state alone?
Steven Molin, Yup, Them are Mustard Seeds
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Nourishing Seeds
When I was a child, life was not easy. My dad worked two jobs to try and support my mom and me so that we could buy a home, have nice clothes and enough to eat. He wasn’t home very much, and when he was home he was usually sleeping because he was so tired. I never really got to spend any time with my dad until I was grown up.
My mom worked hard, too. She didn’t have a job but she was always busy cleaning and cooking, and when I was six years old my mother had a baby and another arrived thirteen months later. Then she was incredibly busy and didn’t have much time left over for me. I felt pretty lonely.
One day I went for a walk, by myself as usual, and I went by the church. In those days the church rectory was next door to the church and as I passed by I saw my minister out in the yard digging. I walked over to him to say “hello” and he put down his shovel, sat down in the grass and began talking to me. He didn’t talk at me, he didn’t give me a sermon, he just sat with me and listened to me talk. He asked me all about school and my life in general. We must have sat and talked like that for at least an hour. He did not know it, but those few moments with him changed me. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was special. I felt worthy of having someone listen to me, I felt treasured and cared about. My minister had no idea how much those few moments meant to me. But that day so long ago, he had planted a seed within me. It didn't sprout up overnight, but it grew, gradually, into a sense of being called to ministry.
Betty Long, Nourishing Seeds
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Humor: The Losing Side
I like the story about the ten-year-old boy who answered the doorbell at his home one day. When he opened it, there stood a strange man on the porch. The man said, "Son, you don't know me, do you?" The young man said, no, he did not. The man replied, "Well, I am your uncle on your father's side." To which the young fellow replied, "Well, I am glad to meet you, but you are certainly on the losing side."
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, Sermons.com
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A Great Dad
One of the greatest preachers and pastors who ever lived was Dwight L. Moody. He was a man of uncompromising principle, but he was also a great dad. His son Willie reported that it was not unusual for Dwight L. Moody to come to one of his children lying in bed late at night and say something like this, "Are you awake? I can't go to sleep till I talk to you. I'm sorry I lost my temper." As a teenager Willie wrote this tribute to his famous father:
"Other kids tell me they cannot go to their dads and just talk and hope to be understood; they say they can't because their dads are 'always right' and they are 'always wrong'. They can't talk to their dads the way I can talk t you. I could always talk to you. You always understood. There was nothing I could not tell you."
Of course Willie is describing here a father who has more than mere time. He also has tenderness and a willingness to admit it when he has made a mistake: but simply taking time is the first step along the journey to successful parenting.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, Sermons.com
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The Power of Memories with Dad
After Tim Russert's book about his father, "Big Russ & Me," became a best-seller, he received letters from daughters and sons who wanted to tell him about their own fathers. This story comes from his new book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons." Russert wrote:
"A few years ago, I became the victim of a senseless, unprovoked act of violence that left several scars on my neck. I survived, and the assailant is in prison, but I will never really be the same. When I shave I see one of the scars, and, until recently, to see that scar was to trigger a visual memory of my assailant's rage-filled face.
"The obvious solution was to stop shaving, but that didn't work. I began to remember the terrible event with increasing vividness, until I finally sought help.
My therapist's first question to me was, "Do you have a good relationship with your father?"
I said, "Yes. We have a great relationship."
The therapist asked if he had taught me how to shave. Before I could answer, a memory I had forgotten for many, many years popped into my head, and I smiled.
'Doctor,' I replied, 'this is so cool! I remember standing at my dad's side as a little boy, infatuated with the process of shaving. It got to the point that when he shaved in the mornings I was always there, watching him. My dad bought me a little toy razor, with a little knob on the bottom of the handle that opened the top, just like his. The blade was a piece of cardboard that looked like a razor blade.
'After that, I got to smear shaving cream all over my face and shave with my dad.'
"My therapist then suggested that I think of this happier memory every time I shaved, to displace the memory of the attack.
"And, indeed, the "new" memory has replaced the violent one. Now, when I shave, I feel the love my dad showed me, and I also remember what it felt like to be innocent. My shaving memory marked the start of a long journey best described as posttraumatic growth.
"Precious memories are made in an instant and last forever. I am so thankful that my dad had the patience back then to let me "shave." That memory has strengthened an already strong relationship, and what made me happy then is making me a happier man today. Bless you, Dad."
Billy D. Strayhorn, From the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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It Is Not a Guess
Several years ago, it was the week before Father's Day and the children and I were looking for a gift for their dad. As we strolled through the men's section of a department store our eyes spotted the perfect gift at the same moment. It was a bright, splashy Hawaiian style shirt with matching shorts. We giggled as we purchased it because Dan is a pretty conservative dresser. As I was handing the money to the woman at the cash register, I asked our oldest daughter, "But, do you think he will actually wear it?" She shrugged her shoulders and said, "It's anybody's guess."
That phrase, "It's anybody's guess," keeps coming up. We don't have to read far in the newspaper these days before we see it. Despite the advanced science of weather forecasting, the final path of a hurricane is anybody's guess. The direction of the housing market in our area is anybody's guess. Next year's property taxes and windstorm insurance are anybody's guess. Some things really are anybody's guess, like whether a certain book will sell well or a new Broadway play will make it to a second season. But, there are some other things in the moral and spiritual realm that are not a guess at all. The kingdom of God is one.
Kristin Borsgard Wee, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost (First Third): Do You Love Me?, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.
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Raising Good Children
Now Jesus is not talking about fatherhood in this passage, but isn't this the very first area in which we participate in the coming of God's kingdom to earth? It is in the raising of our children. Raising good children is like scattering seed upon the ground.
As author Ken Canfield notes, there are no guarantees in either raising kids or planting seed. A farmer can do all the right things and still lose a crop. So can parents. The farmer can till the ground at the right time, put in the right seed, and irrigate and fertilize according to the textbook. But that does not guarantee a crop.
Some of you have learned the hard way that there are no guarantees. But generally, if we have done the best we can in planting and nurturing the seed which are our children, God will reward us with children we can be proud of.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Baseball Will Be Fine
In 1985 Tim Burke saw his boyhood dream come true the day he was signed to pitch for the Montreal Expos. After four years in the minors, he was finally given a chance to play in the big leagues. And he quickly proved to be worth his salt setting a record for the most relief appearances by a rookie player.
Along the way, however, Tim and his wife, Christine, adopted four children with very special needs two daughters from South Korea, a handicapped son from Guatemala, and another son from Vietnam. All of the children were born with very serious illnesses or defects. Neither Tim nor Christine was prepared for the tremendous demands such a family would bring. And with the grueling schedule of major-league baseball, Tim was seldom around to help. So in 1993, only three months after signing a $600,000 contract with the Cincinnati Reds, Tim Burke decided to retire from baseball.
When pressed by reporters to explain this decision, he simply said, "Baseball is going to do just fine without me. But I'm the only father my children have."
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Father's Day is fast approaching. My very wise grandmother used to say, "Anyone can have a child, but it takes a special man to be a father." I wholeheartedly agree. Being a father is much more than performing a biological function. It is about loving and caring, guiding and sharing.
A father is the head of his family. He does this, not out of insecurity, selfishness or pride, but out of the desire to be an obedient servant to God. (Ephesians 5:22)
A father offers wise council so that he may lead his children to a path of righteousness. He is slow to anger, yet demands respect. "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; ..." Ephesians 6:1-3 (See also Genesis 18:19)
A father is strong, reliable and confident. But, a father is also tender, loving and understanding. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: ..." Matt. 7:12 (See also Psalms 103:13)
A father is a good provider. As long as he is capable, he is willing to labor hard to provide shelter for his family, and food on the table ... "if any would not work neither should he eat"(II Thessalonians 3:10)
A father recognizes the importance of making time for those he loves. Little league baseball and dance recitals seem to be his favorite past time. "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
A father is not judged by how much he earns or how many material goods he provides. What does matter to his children is how well he is being a father.
Melanie Schurr
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I’d Rather Have a Backache Now
A man came home from work and saw a neighbor out in the back yard playing ball with his daughter. He knew the man had a hard job - a laborer's job. He called to his friend and said, "Jim you ought not to be doing that. You are going to get a backache." To which the neighbor responded, "Oh yes, maybe, but I'd rather have a backache now than a heartache later." There is a lot of wisdom to this response. We should be participants in our child's life and not spectators. We must know them at playtime, at study time, bedtime, mealtime, family time and worship time. If we come to know them, then the reverse is true, they will come to know us.
Eric S. Ritz, www.Sermons.com
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History of Father's Day
Fathers Day occurs on the 3rd Sunday in June. The idea for creating a day for children to honor their fathers began in Spokane, Washington. A woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the idea for Father's Day while listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909.
Having been raised by her father, Henry Jackson Smart, after her mother died, Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her. It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was, in the eyes of his daughter, a courageous, selfless, and loving man. Sonora's father was born in June, so she chose to hold the first Father's Day celebration in Spokane, Washington on the 19th of June, 1910.
In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Roses are the Father's Day flowers.
Staff
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HUMOR
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We Thought You Said Daddy!
As we celebrate Father’s Day today, I would like to share the following story about the effect that one father had on his family. This particular family had three small children who were determined to have a puppy. Mom protested because she knew that somehow or other, she would end up caring for the critter. True to form, the children solemnly promised that they would take care of it. Eventually, she relented and they brought their little puppy home. The children named him Danny and cared for him diligently - at first. But, sure enough, as time passed, Mom found herself becoming more and more responsible for taking care of the dog. Finally, she decided that the children were not living up to their promise so she began to search for a new home for Danny. When she found one and broke the news to the children, she was quite surprised that they had almost no reaction at all. One of them even said rather matter-of-factly, "We'll miss him."
"I’m sure we will," Mom answered, "but he is too much work for one person and since I'm the one that has to do all the work, I say he goes."
"But," protested another child, "if he wouldn't eat so much and wouldn't be so messy, could we keep him?"
Mom held her ground, "It's time to take Danny to his new home." Suddenly, with one voice and with tears in their eyes, the children exclaimed, "Danny? We thought you said Daddy!"
Traditional
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12 Practical Ways for Men to Impact Fatherless Kids:
1. Be a mentor to a boy without a father through Big Brother or some other agency
2. Contact your local junior or senior high school to tutor a needy kid
3. Teach Sunday School
4. Become a leader in Awana, Pioneer Clubs, or Adventure Club
5. Meet one-on-one weekly, with a boy in your church or neighborhood who doesn't have a father in the home
6. Become a leader in Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts
7. Coach Little League or some other sport
8. Volunteer to work with needy kids in an inner city ministry
9. Hire a potentially "at risk" kid for yard work or in your business
10. Become active youth leaders in your local church or a parachurch organization
11. Start a church-based sports league that reaches out to needy kids in the community
12. Lead a Bible study in a juvenile detention center or group home
June 1996 issue of The Standard (pp 20-23), published by the Baptist General Conference, 2002 S. Arlington Heights Rd., Arlington Heights, IL.
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When God Created Fathers
When the good Lord was creating fathers, He started with a tall frame. And a female angel nearby said, "What kind of father is that? If you’re going to make children so close to the ground, why have you put fathers up so high? He won’t be able to shoot marbles without kneeling, tuck a child in bed without bending, or even kiss a child without a lot of stooping."
And God smiled and said, "Yes, but if I make him child size, who would children have to look up to?"
And when God made a father’s hands, they were large and sinewy.
And the angel shook her head sadly and said, "Do You know what You’re doing? Large hands are clumsy. They can’t manage diaper pins, small buttons, rubber bands on pony tails or even remove splinters caused by baseball bats."
God smiled and said, "I know, but they’re large enough to hold everything a small boy empties from his pockets at the end of a day…yet small enough to cup a child’s face."
Then God molded long, slim legs and broad shoulders.
The angel nearly had a heart attack. "Boy, this is the end of the week, all right," she clucked. "Do You realize You just made a father without a lap? How is he going to pull a child close to him without the kid falling between his legs?"
God smiled and said, "A mother needs a lap. A father needs strong shoulders to pull a sled, balance a boy on a bicycle or hold a sleepy head on the way home from the circus."
God was in the middle of creating two of the largest feet anyone had ever seen when the angel could contain herself no longer. "That’s not fair. Do You honestly think those large boats are going to dig out of bed early in the morning when the baby cries? Or walk through a small birthday party without crushing at least three of the guests?"
And God smiled and said, "They’ll work. You’ll see. They’ll support a small child who wants to "ride a horse to Banbury Cross" or scare off mice at the summer cabin, or display shoes that will be a challenge to fill."
God worked throughout the night, giving the father few words, but a firm authoritative voice; eyes that see everything, but remain calm and tolerant.
Finally, almost as an afterthought, He added tears. Then He turned to the angel and said, "Now are you satisfied that he can love as much as a mother?"
And the angel shutteth up!
By Erma Bombeck
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Depressing Statistics
At the beginning of this decade David Popenoe wrote an article entitled "A World Without Fathers." He gave some rather depressing statistics then: In just three decades, from 1960-1990, the percentage of children living apart for their biological father has more than doubled, from 17% to 36%. It is now estimated that by the turn of the century, 50% of all American children may go to bed at night without being able to speak to their father.
So how are we doing? I am sad to say that I found at least one source which confirmed David Popenoe's prediction.
In an article entitled "Fathering Fatherless America" Dr. Scott J. Larson reports: One in two children now grow up without a father in the United States, and in our inner cities only one in five children live with their father. A whole new mission field has developed in America: Fathering fatherless kids.
Perhaps the most relevant missionary challenge for our society was penned by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father. (I Cor. 4:15 NIV) Paul knew that these people didn't need another teacher, their needs were much deeper, they needed a father. One can't be a father to very many, but Paul knew that God was calling him to be a father to some people in Corinth.
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The Disappearing Dad
Today, we are seeing the disappearing dad. Time magazine featured a cover story on fatherhood. In that story it documented the changing shape of what we call family life. It reported that fathers used to occupy a greater place in the home and that "well into the 18th century, childrearing manuals in America were generally addressed to fathers, not mothers.
But as the industrialization began to separate home and work, fathers could not be in both places at once.
Family life in the 19th century was defined by what historians call the feminization of the domestic sphere and the marginalization of the father as a parent."
The article makes some other sobering points. "Rising divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births mean that more than 40% of all children born between 1970 and 1984 are likely to spend much of their childhood living in single parent homes."
And the impact of these fatherless homes on the children is significant, if not devastating.
Time goes on to say, "Studies of young criminals have found that more than 70% of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. Children from broken families are nearly twice as likely as those in two-parent families to drop out of high school."
Harold L. White, Fatherhood
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I'll Always Be There for You!
It's a fascinating story that comes out of the 1989 earthquake which almost flattened Armenia. This deadly tremor killed over 30,000 people in less than four minutes. In the midst of all the confusion of the earthquake, a father rushed to his son's school. When he arrived there he discovered the building was flat as a pancake.
Standing there looking at what was left of the school, the father remembered a promise he made to his son, "No matter what, I'll always be there for you!" Tears began to fill his eyes. It looked like a hopeless situation, but he could not take his mind off his promise.
Remembering that his son's classroom was in the back right corner of the building, the father rushed there and started digging through the rubble. As he was digging other grieving parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: "My son! "My daughter!" They tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying: "It's too late!" "They're dead!" "You can't help!" "Go home!" Even a police officer and a fire fighter told him he should go home. To everyone who tried to stop him he said, "Are you going to help me now?" They did not answer him and he continued digging for his son stone by stone.
He needed to know for himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?" This man dug for eight hours and then twelve and then twenty-four and then thirty-six. Finally in the thirty-eighth hour, as he pulled back a boulder, he heard his son's voice. He screamed his son's name, "ARMAND!" and a voice answered him, "Dad?" It's me Dad!" Then the boy added these priceless words, "I told the other kids not to worry. I told 'em that if you were alive, you'd save me and when you saved me, they'd be saved. You promised that, Dad. 'No matter what,' you said, 'I'll always be there for you!' And here you are Dad. You kept your promise!"
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul
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We All Need Dads!
Some years ago, South Africa's game managers had to figure out what to do about the elephant herd at Kruger National Park. The herd was growing well beyond the ability of the park to sustain it. And so they decided to transport some of the herd to a nearby game park.
A dozen years later, however, several of the young male elephants (now teenagers) that had been transported to the game park began attacking the park’s herd of white rhinos, an endangered species. They used their trunks to throw sticks at the rhinos, chased them over long hours and great distances and stomped to death a tenth of the herd--all for no discernible reason.
Park managers decided they had no choice but to kill some of the worst juvenile offenders. They had killed five of them when someone came up with another bright idea. They brought in some of the mature male elephants still residing in the Kruger Park and hoped that the bigger, stronger males could bring the adolescents under control. To the delight of the park officials, it worked. The big bulls quickly established the natural hierarchy and reduced the violent behavior of the younger bulls.
"The new discipline, it turned out, was not just a matter of size intimidation," says Raspberry. "The young bulls actually started following the Big Daddies around, yielding to their authority and learning from them proper elephant conduct. The assaults on the white rhinos ended abruptly.”
Raspberry's point was that young males--whether they are wild animals or human beings--need Dads.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com, adapted from October 11, 2005, Washington Post Writers Group.
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Garrison Keillor, on his "Writer’s Almanac" on National Public Radio reminds us that Father's Day goes back "to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother's Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition, too. So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father's birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father's Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother's Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father's Day, not until 1972. Mother's Day is still the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants and long distance phone companies. Father's Day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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I Loved Daddy
To love someone unconditionally as I loved Daddy is to remember isolated and long-past moments together, to remember nuances that made such an object of love unique and impossible to replace.
That is why I remember, and cherish, the memories of the man’s hair, his smell, his likes and dislikes, his speech, and his idiosyncrasies.
We had such a little time together. War took him away.
Then he came back for a short time before he was gone again. He never would return on a full-time basis.
Maybe that is why each of the nuances, each of the jokes and stories, each of the memories is so priceless to me. I have some pictures of my father. I have that packet of war records. I have the flag that was across his casket. I have his Bronze Star and his Purple Hearts in a frame and they hang on my wall.
But what I don’t have anymore is him. There will be no new memories made. That is why I cling to those I have with such tenacity.
Lewis Grizzard, My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun
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Here Comes another Preacher Story
Fred Craddock, while lecturing at Yale University, told of going back home one summer to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to take a short vacation with his wife. One night they found a quiet little restaurant where they looked forward to a private meal-just the two of them.
While they were waiting for their meal they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting guests. Craddock whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn't come over here." He didn't want the man to intrude on their privacy. But the man did come by his table.
"Where you folks from?" he asked amicably.
"Oklahoma."
"Splendid state, I hear, although I've never been there. What do you do for a Jiving?
"I teach homiletics at the graduate seminary of Phillips University."
"Oh, so you teach preachers, do you. Well, I've got a story I want to tell you." And with that he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with Craddock and his wife.
Dr. Craddock said he groaned inwardly: Oh no, here comes another preacher story. It seems everyone has one.
The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Ben Hooper. I was born not far from here across the mountains. My mother wasn't married when I was born so I had a hard time. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn't a very nice name. I used to go off by myself at recess and during lunch-time because the taunts of my playmates cut so deeply.
"What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering just who my real father was.
"When I was about 12 years old a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.
"Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?'
I felt the old weight come on me. It was like a big black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down.
But as he looked down at me, studying my face, he began to smile a big smile of recognition. "Wait a minute," he said, "I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God."
With that he slapped me across the rump and said, "Boy you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it."
The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said, "That was the most important single sentence ever said to me." With that he smiled, shook the hands of Craddock and his wife, and moved on to another table to greet old friends.
Suddenly, Fred Craddock remembered. On two occasions the people of Tennessee had elected an illegitimate to be their governor. One of them was Ben Hooper.
Jamie Buckingham, Power for Living
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Paco's Father
There's a Spanish story of a father and son who had become estranged. The son ran away, and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read: Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father. On Saturday 800 Pacos showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Bits & Pieces, October 15, 1992, p. 13.
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Dad as Nurturer
I think that we can affirm that fathers are called upon to be nurturers. We see so much that is negative about society today that sometimes we forget that there are some very positive things that are happening. One of those positive things, it seems to me, is that society is completely rethinking what the role of the father should be. Society, and the church to a lesser degree, is saying: it is not enough dad, just to be the breadwinner. You need to help with the nurturing as well.
This is not always easy because men historically have not been expected to fill this role, or at least not as much as the mother. There was an interesting story that appeared on the NBC Today show that told about a YMCA program in California. Fathers are placed in a playroom with their children. The mothers watch from a one-way window outside in the hallway. The one rule is that if the child starts crying, the father cannot take him or her to the mother. He must resolve the problem himself. If the child is given to the mother when it is crying, so the theory goes, that sends the signal that the one who gives the comfort and love is the mother.
Staff, www.eSermons.com
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I'm Raising Kids!
Harmon Killebrew, the great baseball player of yesteryear, tells in his autobiography about growing up in a home with four boys. He says that on one occasion his father was out in the front yard playing baseball with the boys and a neighbor walked by and said, "Mr. Killebrew, if you keep on playing baseball out on your front lawn, you won't have any grass left in your yard." Mr. Killebrew said, "Sir, I'm not raising grass, I'm raising kids."
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How We View Our Fathers
4 years: My daddy can do anything.
7 years: My dad knows a lot, a whole lot.
8 years: My father doesn't quite know everything.
12 years: Oh well, naturally Father doesn't know everything.
14 years: Father? Hopelessly old-fashioned.
21 years: Oh, that man is out-of-date. What did you expect?
25 years: He knows a little bit about it but not much.
30 years: Must find out what Dad thinks about it.
35 years: A little patience, let's get Dad's meaning first.
40 years: What would Dad have thought about it?
50 years: My Dad knew literally everything.
60 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad once more.
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Kids Are Fun
Kids are fun. A little girl came home from Sunday School. "What did you learn today?" her father asked. She responded, "All I heard was that the children of Israel did this and the children of Israel did that. Didn't the grown ups do anything?"
Another one. The new baby came home from the hospital. The three-year-old met her new brother at the door and tagged along like a shadow as he was carried in and placed in the basinet. Big sister stood and watched in fascination and noticed that the new arrival was still wearing his ID bracelet. She asked, "Mommy, when are you going to take off his price tag?"
Another Sunday School story. Two very modern little girls were solemnly discussing the lesson while coming home after church one day. One asked, "Do you believe in the Devil?" The other promptly responded, "No, of course not. It's just like Santa Claus - he's your father." Hmm. Happy Fathers Day.
David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons