Father's House Blog

   Last week, Tuesday January 20th 2009, will go down in history as one of those memorable and historical days. After swearing the oath of allegiance in Washington DC, Barak Obama became the 44th US President and the first African American to sit at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. It was a moment of which Aaron Sorkin (writer of the West Wing series) would have been proud. I don't think there were many unmoved by this great and mighty victory for the Civil Rights movement in America. Whatever your political persuasion, this day marks a new beginning for the legacy of Martin Luther King. That can only be a good thing.

    Many will be offering their commentary on the significance of President Obama's inauguration. I don't want to add to the great volume of noise about this issue generated by the secular columnists and commentators. I want to offer a few prophetic thoughts on why I believe Obama's election is important in addressing the pandemic of fatherlessness in the world. For me, this is the real issue at stake here.

    Last Fall I was in Washington DC with a Fathers House team. During that time I read Barak Obama's book, Dreams from my Father. It is a remarkably honest account of Obama's father loss. His father walked out on his mother when he was just two years old. Obama was only to see his dad one more time after that, when he was ten years old. Dreams from my Father is Obama's very moving quest to discover who his father really was and, in the process, to find out his own identity as well. Amongst many other things, this involved a visit to Kenya where his father had lived and worked.

    Perhaps the most poignant moment in the book is the description of a dream that Obama had as he was trying to honour his father's memory:
 
    "Another year would pass before I would meet him one night, in a cold cell, in a chamber of my dreams.

  
   I stood before the cell, opened the padlock, and set it carefully on a window ledge.  My father was before me with only a cloth wrapped around his waist; he was very thin, with his large head and slender frame, his hairless arms and chest.  He looked pale, his black eyes luminous against an ashen face, but he smiled and gestured for the tall, mute guard to please stand aside.
     “Look at you,” he said. “So tall- and so thin. Grey hairs, even!” And I saw that it was true, and I walked up to him and we embraced and I began to weep, and felt ashamed, but could not stop myself.
    “Barack, I always wanted to tell you how much I love you,” he said. He seemed small in my arms now, the size of a boy.
     He sat at the corner of his cot and set his head on his clasped hands and stared away from me, into the wall.  An implacable sadness spread across his face.  I tried to joke with him; I told him that if I was thin it was only because I took after him.  But he couldn’t be budged. And when I whispered to him that we might leave together, he shook his head and told me it would be best if I left.
     I awoke still weeping, my first real tears for him- and for me, his jailor, his judge, his son"...
 
    It is impossible not to identify with Obama's very moving account of embracing his father in this extremely vivid dream. In these beautifully written words we not only get an insight into Obama's heart but also into the heart and soul of America. Much of America is now suffering from a pandemic of fatherlessness. This is especially acute in the African American culture, but it is by no means restricted to that. It is everywhere. Books like Fatherless America prove the point. The man in the Oval Office is no different from the people he is called and chosen to represent. He is a man with deep father wounds. Abandoned by his father as a child, Obama understands from personal experience what I call 'the orphan heart'.

    So Obama is no different from the majority in this, both in the USA and the world as a whole. But he is different in one respect. His experience of being poorly fathered has given him a great passion to father his daughters really well, and to call the men of his own culture - the African American culture - to be good fathers.

    Last June, on Father's Day 2008, Obama said this at the Apostolic Church of God in South Side Chicago:
 
    “If we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children. We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it” ...
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/15/obamas-fathers-day-speech_n_107220.html)
 
    Obama's words are significant. Obama is on record as saying if there is one thing that he wants to achieve in his life more than anything else it's to be a good father to his daughters. We need to pray for him. He is not only an icon of hope for those oppressed by the toxic ideology of racism. He is also an icon of hope for those of us who want to see an end to the pandemic of fatherlessness in the world. My prayer for him is a simple one... that he would be so gripped by the Father's love that he will become the world's greatest ambassador for fatherhood in the world today. If that were to prove true, then what a legacy he would leave...

    So join with me in praying for the new President. What better words could we find than those of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 3? Make Barak Obama the focus of this apostolic prayer.

    For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.