“Honor your father and your mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” -Exodus 20:12, KJV.
The fifth of the Ten Commandments and the first with an expressed promise teaches us that we are to honor both our parents. “Honor” involves love, respect, appreciation, looking up to them and accepting their instruction and leadership.
Parents, in turn, are to lead lives that command our love and respect. Statistics report that there are more than 70 million fathers in the United States today. Many of these are responsible, caring adults and are seeking to rear their children well. But many, however, are what we term in today’s definitions, “Absentee Fathers,” those who have abandoned their children to others’ care. I pray that any father now reading this will examine how well he loves his child (children) and how he is seeking to rear each one in parental love, with goals and initiatives, and certainly in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
A brief history of Father’s Day in America reveals that it was begun in Washington state in the year 1910. It is reported that a lady named Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington talked to her pastor about setting aside a day to honor Fathers as the one in May honored Mothers. Sonora’s mother had died in childbirth, giving birth to her, the seventh child. Her father, William Jackson Smart, had been a Civil War Veteran. When his wife died, he wanted to do the best he could to rear his six sons and the new baby daughter. He kept them together, managed to operate his small farm to make a living, and loved his children and reared them “in the fear and admonition of the Lord.” A day in June was set aside to honor her father and the word was spread abroad by word of mouth and small-town newspapers. President Woodrow Wilson pushed the idea of Father’s Day, as did President Calvin Coolidge. It began to be observed in a more wide-spread area. However, it did not become a nation-wide, consistent observance until President Lyndon Johnson gave his presidential proclamation in 1966 for the day during his administration. Then when President Richard Nixon was in office, he set the day officially as the third Sunday in June and signed that proclamation. Since then, Father’s Day has been observed consistently in America on the third Sunday in June. It is a time when families gather to give tribute to the father in the family, thank him for his leadership of the family, and bestow gifts upon him. Usually in our churches, fathers are asked to stand, and we often hear a sermon both praising fathers and admonishing them to hold high the torch of faith before their children
Like Sonora Smart Dodd, I had a wonderful father who reared his children after their mother died.
My father was not a veteran of any war, but he was truly a veteran as a father. Godly and seeing that his children read and learned the King James Version of the Bible and went to Sunday School and Church regularly, we knew what our father expected of us. His life was not easy, but none of his children embarrassed him or went away from our strict but happy and dependable upbringing. Today, I thank God for a godly father, one who loved each child unconditionally, and taught us how to love others. Praises for fathers such as mine! - Ethelene Dyer Jones. June 17, 2018
