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Father's Day
Contrary to what you might have heard, Father’s Day was not established
as a holiday by greeting card companies to help their business.
A day to celebrate fathers was first proposed in 1909 by Sonora Dodd of
Spokane, Washington. The idea came to Mrs. Dodd on Mothers Day. She was in
church listening to a sermon about the sacrifices mothers make for their
children, when she realized that it had been her widowed father who
had made the kind of sacrifices the pastor was describing. A Civil War
veteran, William Smart, had raised his six children alone on a farm after
his wife died giving birth to their sixth child.
The mayor of Spokane chose June 19, 1910, for the celebration, because
June was William Smart’s birth month. Newspapers around the country covered
the event, and interest grew, but it was not until 1924 that President
Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, observe a Father’s
Day, in part, “to impress upon fathers the full measure of their
obligations.”
In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson established the third Sunday of June as
a recommended national day to celebrate fathers. And in 1972, sixty-two
years after Sonora Dodd proposed it, President Richard Nixon signed the
public law making Father’s Day permanent.
For Christians, Father’s Day is not only a day to celebrate fathers and
fatherhood, but also a reminder of the unconditional love of God for
humanity. Jesus painted a word picture of God the Father’s deep love and
devotion to humanity in his parable about the prodigal son, which is really
about The Loving Father.
In the parable’s father we see authority that does not domineer, but that
patiently, yet eagerly, awaits. It is a lesson about how deeply God loves us
in spite of our foolishness and about the transforming power of love in a
parent child relationship. In the midst of the prodigal’s rebellion, he
remembers how good he had it at home with his father.
When the older son complains to his father that he has treated his
younger brother too extravagantly after squandering his life for years, the
father patiently and joyfully explains:
‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have
is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours
was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found’” (Luke 15:31).
Through all our sin and rebellion, God is with us, waiting anxiously for
us to come home, and never abandoning us in our struggles. May all of us
know God the Father’s love for us. And may all of us who are fathers love
our children as our heavenly Father loves us.
I’m Joseph Tkach speaking of LIFE.
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