Fathers

I was doing an interview on KFUO with my daughter on our book Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood on the subject of Father’s Day. As I was talking about how our Heavenly Father works through earthly fathers, it hit me that this will be the first Father’s Day I will have known without my father, who died just a few weeks ago.

I kind of broke (as my father would have said) in the middle of the interview. Then again, I am a father too, and I felt that fatherly joy in one’s children as my daughter was giving such good answers on the show, thinking how well she turned out. So it was a bittersweet, yet satisfying, moment.

But it makes me realize all the more how precious fathers are, what a gift from God they are, and what a privilege it is to have the vocation of being a father.

So happy Father’s Day to everyone who has had a father (which would include everyone) and to everyone who is a father!

And if you never knew your father (as is the case with so many young people today), or don’t have a father in your life anymore (like me, now), or are a single mother trying to raise your kids without a father’s help (like so many), God Himself promises that He will step in and fill the void, serving as the father directly: