The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Associate Pastor
It’s Father’s Day, a cultural holiday designed to honor fathers while lining the tradesman’s pockets with cash spent on sentimental gifts for dad… but I digress.
While Pastor Joe has been focusing on the Father in his Vesper homilies, it might be good to remind fathers, on their day, that they are raising and training their children to move on, to leave, to mature from glory to glory to the point they can leave “father and mother and cleave” to their spouse (Genesis 2:24).
So often parents dream of their children living next door all their lives, having a compound with their children and spouses and grandchildren all around them, happily ever after. But those children all have separate households and wholly other spouses than mom’s and dad’s genes and things don’t always work out, leaving everyone in a huff because they finally learned that father-in-laws and mother-in-laws don’t have equal authority in their children’s families. No, their son or son-in-law is in charge, and he, in Jesus, might not see eye to eye with them.
So fathers, on your day, be thinking about how biblical fathers train their children to look outward, to build the kingdom with and from their own family, in their own calling, all to the glory of God. Fathers, be thinking about how to model masculinity to your sons, with Jesus as the model: fearless, compassionate, caring, teachable, but also a leader who knows the heavenly Father’s goals, etc. Fathers, be thinking about how to love your daughters so that they are filled with kind love that they’ll want to source from the right husband in the future, and not fall for any “love ‘em and leave ‘em” types. Teach them the value of masculine leadership and provision and protection, so they’ll seek that out from a godly man as well.
All of this, of course, flows from you imitating the heavenly Father.