A Father . . . With Interest

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4 (NIV)

Two photographic images have stuck in my mind for years, though I do not know whether they are actually photographs or real-life scenes I witnessed somewhere.

In one, a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, is on his father’s shoulders. The boy is excitedly pointing off to the left. The father, standing straight despite the 60 to 80 pounds on his back, is straining to see what his son is pointing to. The picture holds no clue, no background detail, to indicate where these two are or what they are looking at.

The other mental photo is of a man at a table with his daughter, his right hand braced on the back of her chair while he leans across to point at a model of a building. The young girl is holding up before her a piece of the model that she is about to place where the father is pointing. The expression on her face reveals attentive engagement; the father is smiling and relaxed.

Unlike the first picture, this one has background. Behind the couple a large desk is piled with papers, charts, folders, a computer, phone, and other objects and apparatuses. Perpendicular to the desk is a drafting table with a large chart like a blueprint. A portion of a window shows with sunlight streaming in.

I can’t remember when or where these pictures were planted in my mind’s eye. But for a long time, I have made much of them. Whether as pastor or teacher or husband or father, I come up against the issue of fathers not devoting interested time with their children. For years from pulpit or classroom or the press, we’ve seen the facts of American men’s workaholism and detachment from their families, an effect of a national ethos that supports long work weeks, long hours, overtime, short vacations—sometimes given reluctantly by employers—all of which add up to Americans spending more time at work than their counterparts in Europe and indeed in most of the rest of the world. The affective toll on children is a subject of continual debate and study.

One thing is clear. The father can’t lose who loves his children—with interest in them and what they can be and do. He may have to include them in his own work from time to time as circumstance requires. I have a son-in-law who regularly takes my grandson to his office, gives him something engaging to do or contrives a way that they can work together on a project, even just straightening up the room. God generates in all who give way to it a creative force of love; fathers who wish to love God should love their children through that creative love-gift of engagement in their lives.