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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 45. Fatherhood.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 45. Fatherhood.
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Fatherhood.
It means much more to be a father, even in the common limited meaning of that word, than many of us seem to have found out. It means thoughtfulness beforehand. Not merely thoughtfulness about the life whose coming makes a father, but about one's self a long time before that glad event; because the man makes the father, even as the father the child.
Whatever a man might wish to have his child be, that he must be himself for long years before. And what he would not have the growing son to be that he must not be. For the man gives himself out, physically and mentally, habits and thoughts and purpose, to become another one like himself. There are a great many men who have children who are not fathers, except in the barren technical and legal meaning. And there can be no meaning so empty of meaning as the legal and technical meaning.
Fatherhood does not begin at the birth of a child. Its beginnings go as far back as a man is making his character by his habit of life.
And fatherhood ends—when? ever? In the best meaning, never. Yet there comes a distinct change in the relation when the child is grown to maturity, and especially when he enters into fulness of life with another. All through the tender years, the growing years, the difficult years bristling with questions, he is to be a father in ever growing richness of meaning, a mothering father, until he finds the highest image of manhood and of womanhood imprinted on his own, to whom he gave life.
The father is the head of the home, with gentle dignity acting his full part as head. He is the priest and minister to his household. The simple word of thanksgiving at the meal, the gathering of the family together, morning or night or both, for reading a bit out of the old Book of God, and in simplest homeliest language giving thanks, and asking a blessing upon the circle—these belong to the father. They are a part of the simple meaning of the word "father." For a father is a priest or minister. He was a father before he was a priest, and only became priest because he was a father.
The father is a human mediator between God and these whom he has created with God's partnership. Quite apart from what a man's creed or church may be, he stands to his family for God, to teach of God, to lead in the worship of God, and to act the part of God's man to his own inner circle. And he stands to God for his family, to voice their thanksgiving, and needs. This is a part of his father part in the family.
The father is the administrator of the home, with wisdom and firmness and much loving gentleness, holding all things true to the law of the little home realm. He is the teacher and companion of his children. His bread-earning takes him away for most of the day likely. But every other thing comes in distinctly second to the glad great service in the home. With the mother, he is in the home the teacher of the school, the consulting librarian of the book world, the president of the literary society, and of the social club, the chief craftsman of the workshop, to the group he is fathering.
The problems, the unceasing questions, the difficulties, the temptations of his sons and daughters belong to him, up to and including the time when their love affairs begin to come. There is no greater achievement ever attained by any mortal than to get and to hold, clear through these years and experiences, the full simple unhesitating confidence of one's boys and girls. And there is no wealth of life, either in experience or brain or heart—with mere money not high enough up to be reckoned in—to be compared with this.
A friend of ours had two little daughters. He was the secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association of his city. One day one of his daughters asked her mother to ask her father for a certain thing for her. The mother gently said, "You ask papa yourself, dear." "Well," she hesitatingly said, "you know I'm not very well acquainted with papa." He was an earnest, Christian man, with warm, sympathetic heart, especially with working-men, among whom he was a favourite. Yet he was all unconsciously teaching his daughter a meaning of God as father that left her poor. And he was missing a meaning that would have greatly enriched his heart for the work to which his whole life was so ardently and intelligently given.
A neighbour had come into a home to talk a bit with the little three-year-old daughter of whom she was fond. "How many brothers have you?" she asked. "Three," promptly replied the little one. "Three? Why, I thought there were only two. What are the names of your three brothers?" And the little one replied, "Launcie and Teddo and Papa." And when the words were faithfully reported to the father in the evening, a new warmth gathered in his heart as he smiled, for he knew he had thus far been a real father-companion to his daughter.