Honoring Fathers

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  Exodus 20:12. ( ESV).

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” –Colossians 3:20-21 (ESV).

     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 and accepting the leadership of the one honored.  And of course, parents are to lead lives of respect and honor.  Children are to obey parents.  But parents are to live in such a way that children can respect them.  Parents are not to provoke children or cause them to be discouraged because they set such high goals children have difficulty measuring up to expectations.

     Did you know there are some 70 million fathers in the United States?  Many of these are responsible adults and are seeking to rear and support their children well.  But many, unfortunately, are “absentee fathers” who have abdicated—or never accepted—responsibility for children’s upbringing.

     Looking into the history of Fathers’ Day celebrated the third Sunday in June in America shows that Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington suggested a day to honor fathers in 1910.  She wanted to respect the memory of her own father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War Veteran who reared six children, herself and five brothers as a single parent after the death of his wife and their mother.  Mrs. Dodd suggested to her pastor that a day be set aside to honor Father’s much as the one in May for Mother’s Day.  Father’s Day in America was observed on June 10, 1910 in Spokane, Washington.  The day was supported somewhat by Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge.  In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a Father’s Day proclamation, but it was not until 1972 under President Richard Nixon that Father’s Day was set by signed proclamation to be held the third Sunday in June.

     I honor my own father, J. Marion Dyer.  Like Sonora Smart Dodd’s father, my father lost companions to death and reared children by both his first and second wife after their deaths.  He manifested great faith, love, patience, endurance and example.  I am the beneficiary of a godly father.  I was married to a man who became an exemplary father to our children, seeking to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Fortunate are we who have the legacy of a good home and a father worthy of honor. 

     Dr. B. B. McKinney, noted hymnologist of the last century, wrote this prayer in his hymn entitled  

“God Give Us Christian Homes”: 

               “God give us Christian homes!

                 Homes where the father is true and strong,

                 Homes that are free from the blight of wrong,

                 Homes that are joyous with love and song,

                God give us Christian homes!  God give us Christian homes!”

      May his words be our prayer for this Father’s Day.  And Happy Father’s Day, all you wonderful fathers who might read this, and all of you who read and think about the influence of your own father.  Thank God for godly fathers.  –Ethelene Dyer Jones  06.15.2014.