Christian Reflection and Prayer

In honor of Father's Day this coming Sunday,
I am posting a piece by Paul Harvey.

What Is a Father?

A father is a person who is forced to endure
childbirth without an anesthetic. He growls
when he feels good and laughs very loud
when he is scared half-to-death.

A father never feels entirely worthy of the
worship in a child's eyes. He is never quite
the hero his daughter thinks. Never quite the man
his son believes him to be. And this worries him
sometimes. (So he works too hard to try to
smooth the rough places in the road of those
of his own who will follow him.)

A father is a person who goes to war sometimes
...and would run the other way, except that war
is part of an important job in his life (which is
making the world better for his child than it has
been for him).

Fathers grow older faster than other people,
because they, in other wars, have to stand at the
train station and wave goodbye to the uniform that
climbs on board. And, while mothers cry where it
shows, fathers stand and beam ... outside ...
and die inside.

Fathers are men who give daughters away to other
men who aren't nearly good enough, so that they
can have children that are smarter than anybody's.

Fathers fight dragons almost daily. They hurry
away from the breakfast table off to the arena,
which is sometimes called an office or a workshop.
There they tackle the dragon with three heads —
Weariness, Work, and Monotony. And they never
quite win the fight, but they never give up.

Knights in shining armor; fathers in shiny trousers.
There's little difference as they march away each
workday.


I trust that you will be able to honor your father,
either in person or as you share with others what's
in your memory about your dad.

I hope you dads out there will be a blessing to
your families and that you will be blessed by
your families.

REMEMBER:

By the time a man realizes that his father was
usually right, he has a son who thinks he's usually
wrong.