I have heard from all three of my adult children on this Father's Day morning, and so I will head into worship on the empowering, uplifting breeze of their love. One of them will be at Bridge St. for the service today, so I am delighted. The other two must work, and one is doing what I am doing as a United Church minister. I remember each of their birth's vividly and the sense of elation each time in the relief that they came into the world healthy and whole. We chose not to know the gender in advance, so the anticipation and speculation were part of our excitement.
There is an certain irony that I have lingering misgivings about my parental role when they were young because I chose to be so busy doing God's work. In retrospect I'm quite sure God was trying to get my attention and assure me that parenthood was my highest vocation. Thank God for Ruth!
Fortunately Isaac, Jocelyn, and Emily exhibited the amazing grace, the extravagant love and the intimate friendship which Paul speaks about in one of our readings today. Often in scripture fathers bless their children. My children have bestowed a blessing on me today, and I feel blessed.
I think a lot of our generation may have "misgivings" about our parenting role (caught between the "rules" of our faith for raising kids, and our parents' models - and the new "experts", it was not easy to decide what was best) - I am amazed at my three sons' and their wives' parenting skills - they are definitely doing it better than I did and I am proud of them.
ReplyDeleteI too feel very blessed by this past Fathers Day.
ReplyDeleteI received a very touching card from my daughter titled "Dads inspire us to follow our Dreams". It depicts a father carrying his daughter up on his shoulders out onto a waterside dock. The inside verse says: "As long as there are amazing dads like you, there'll be lucky daughters like me. Happy Fathers Day". Signed Andrea.
It doesn't get much better than that.
It looks as though we "done gooder" than we thought we did! Thanks for the comments.
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