Father's House Blog

This Sunday June 21^st, it’s Father’s Day. Father’s Day has an interesting history. The idea for creating a day to honour fathers began in Spokane, Washington. A woman called Sonora Smart Dodd had the idea while listening to a Mother's Day sermon in1909.

Having been raised by her father, William Jackson Smart, after her mother died, Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her. He had been born in June so she decided to celebrate the first Father's Day on the 19th of June, 1910.

In1926, a National Father's Day Committee was formed in New York City. Father's Day was recognized by a Joint Resolution of Congress in 1956. In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father'sDay to be held on the third Sunday of June.

Father's Day was therefore established out of gratitude by a daughter who thought that fathers should be honoured with a special day just as mothers are.

Of course, nearly 100 years later, the world has changed a lot. Father’s Day is now not nearly as significant as it was in 1910. Two world wars have ravaged families of their fathers, and in addition the world after WW2 has seen fathers increasingly regarded as non-essential items – like cheap plastic razors ordisposable cameras. In a culture steeped in political correctness, the father has almost become persona non grata. So while Mother’s Day is celebrated by the majority, Father’s Day is celebrated by a diminishing minority.

This Father’s Day, 2009, I would like to encourage every Christian to put fatherhood back on the map. When Jesus came, he used the word ‘Father’, or more accurately, ‘Daddy’, when he spoke about God and in the process raised fatherhood to the highest possible level. Let’s give a place of deep and lasting honour to fatherhood, whether we have been well fathered or not.

In addition, this Father’s Day 2009, I would like to encourage every father to recognise the immense privilege that it is to be a dad. Being a father brings a person very close to the heart of God, which is the heart of a Father – indeed, the heart of the world’s greatest Father. As Bishop Jon Inge has said this week, in an article preparing for Father’s Day:

“I have always believed in my head that God loves me unconditionally but it was only when I became a father myself that I began to understand it with my heart. From the moment when I first set eyes on my first child, now aged ten, my love for her was so immediate and strong that I would have done anything to protect her - and still would. And that set me wondering about the love of God: if I, with all my faults, could love like that, then maybe I could understand in a new way how it is possible for God to love me like this”.

Finally, this Father’s day 2009, I want to encourage all those who are sons and daughters of whatever age to give thanks for your father, and to show that gratitude in some special way. To have a dad is a great gift – increasingly rare in contemporary UK. This is ‘fatherless Britain’, and ours is the Orphan Generation. If you have a dad, show him some special token of your appreciation this Father’s Day.

When one of my children was just 12 years old, he wrote this on a piece of paper and left it on my desk at work:

My father is a good man

He is a loving man who knows what’s best

He is fair and cares about everyone

He is a hero to me and inspiration

He is always there and is never away for too long

He makes you laugh and smile

He opens your eyes

He lets you know if it’s right or wrong

He is the best dad you could ask for

He is someone I always want to be like

He is my father

I think that’s one of the most meaningful gifts I have ever received in my life and I have never forgotten it.

Father’s Day 2009 is an important day. Find a way to celebrate it. As John Inge, Bishop of Worcester says, in his article referred to earlier:

“Let’s celebrate Father’s day in our churches, honouring those fathers who have shown us something of God’s love, praying for fathers to be given strength in their crucial role and remembering that God, who is our Father in heaven, loves us more than we can grasp”.

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/fathersday/article.html