Father's Day Thought for the Week...

This was what I put together for the Brechin Advertiser this week. Hope you enjoy.

With Father’s Day this up-coming Sunday, 21 June, I will take a wee break from my ‘to be continued’ series and give a few thoughts on fathers. There are days dads get a rather bad deal and days we only get what we deserve, and then there are times we get better than we deserve. I try to take all three types of days in stride.

The challenge with being a father is that it is easy to get the job of dad, sometimes before one thinks he is really ready, truth is we are never really ready, but as I said it is can be an easy job to get, after all it is just a matter of biology. But really being a DAD and FATHER on the other hand is not so easy and part of the problem with being a dad is that sometimes our dads didn't do such a great job of showing us how to do this big job. Sometimes it is a matter of us not being in the right places at the right times to really be part of our children’s lives. Sometimes we are just lazy and there are a bunch of other factors of course.

As a minister I try to spend a bit of time reading my Bible and in it sadly there are not very many ‘great dads’ to model what it takes to get the job done. Our first father Adam really started the whole mess, couldn’t even obey God to not eat one little piece of fruit for goodness sake, then he blamed Eve... Then over and over we find dads that let their kids down, did the wrong thing for the wrong reason and we wonder why we can’t get it sorted our own selves.

There is a wee story, that I have no idea of the origins, of a dad that is watching his son trying to move a really heavy stone. The lad is grunting and groaning and making hard graft of it and still no joy. The dad asks, “Son, are you sure you are using all your strength to get that stone moved?” The exasperated son says “Of course I am...” To which the father replies, “No you are not, you haven’t asked me to help you.”

Thing is we, as dads, really are that wee lad trying desperately to move the rock of raising our children all by ourselves, when we could so easily ask a heavenly father to help us. God does want to be our heavenly father so that we can call out to him as Jesus did and as Paul encourages us to do; to call out Abba Father, or Daddy Daddy. There is all the help we need if we just ask.

I don’t know how you feel but it warms my heart when my wee lassies come running up to me and tell me they love me or what a good dad I am. I’d tell you it works as well when my big braw lads tell me they love me as well, but goodness knows I’d never want to embarrass them by saying that in public, so we shall leave it to the wee lassies to make a Daddy feel good inside. But God, ‘Our Father which is in Heaven’ also likes to hear from us once in a while as well. And he sets a pretty good example for us to follow. The best line I think starts out; “For God so loved...”

Rev. Jon Bergen