One day a man went into a barber’s and noticed a young man sweeping the floor. After talking to him, he learned that the boy had no dad in his life. ‘Son,’ the man asked, ‘who do you want to be like when you grow up?’ The boy shot back, ‘Mister, I ain’t never met nobody I want to be like when I grow up.’ Do you believe that at least one of every child’s heroes should be his or her dad? Do you genuinely want to be a hero to your children? If you do, you’ll have to make time for them, and work at being the father they need. If you don’t, they may pick the wrong heroes and end up breaking your heart.
Child psychologist Wade F. Horn considered himself an expert on what made a good father. But when doctors diagnosed him with cancer and told him that he had about six years to live, he realised with a jolt that he was closer to primary school than university in his level of expertise as a dad. He said, ‘It became clear to me in a personal way that if I were to have died because of that illness, my unfinished business would not have been my clinical practice…My unfinished business would have been my two little girls, who every morning when I was recuperating, would come and give me a kiss goodbye.’ Fortunately (or unfortunately) most dads will never get a wake-up call of this nature. But if you’ve been neglecting your kids, a wake-up call is exactly what you need.
1 Chronicles 19-21, Acts 17:16-34
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