Tim Furrow said to fathers: “Live so that your son, when people tell him that he reminds them of you, will stick out his chest, not his tongue.”¹ The sobering influence of a father on his child was written by Herbert Parker:
“To get his good night kiss he stood beside my chair one night,
And raised an eager face to me, A face with love alight.
And as I gathered in my arms the son God gave to me,
I thanked the lad for being good, and hoped he’d always be!
His little arms crept round my neck, and then I heard him say
Four simple words I can’t forget—Four words that made me pray;
They turned a mirror on my soul, on secrets no one knew;
That startled me, I hear them yet: He said, ‘I’ll be like you!’”²
When God wanted to redeem the human race, He sent us His Son, Who said, “You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Fathers, you will never receive a greater nor better challenge! That resulted in Lee Haines fittingly raising the question: “If God’s character is to be understood in terms of my life [as a father], what does my child think of God?” (Inspiring Quotations, #887, p. 71). Could the answer be about like an 8 year old gave in a school composition about his father; “He can climb the highest mountain or swim the biggest ocean. He can fly the fastest plane and fight the strongest tiger. My father can do anything, but most of the time he just carries out the garbage.” (Quotable Quotations, p. 134).
- Lloyd Cory, Quotable Quotations, Victor Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1994, p. 134.
- Albert M. Wells, Jr., Inspiring Quotations, Thomas Nelson Publish- ers, Nashville, 1988, #891, p.72.