Being a Father - A Steward of Your Children's Dreams

Being a Father – A Steward of Your Children’s Dreams

On Father’s Day, the gentleman giving the “Children’s Sermon” declared fatherhood as a charge of stewardship of his children’s dreams.  He challenged fathers to be faithful caretakers of their children’s dreams by making sacrifices of time, money and work to ensure their children a reasonable opportunity to actualize their potential.  Among the obligatory offerings are impulse spending, clothing splurges, vacation indulgences and aimless use of time.  Fulfilling a biblical mandate, fathers have a requirement to devote the use of their essential resources to encouraging and empowering their children to become the very best people of which they are capable.  God ordains fathers to guide their children in discovering their uniqueness as children of God.  Practically speaking, they assist their children in the processing of mining within their characters and interests until they find the unique contribution which God creates them to make to the human family.  This contribution need not be grand in the celebrity sense but it can be magnanimous as it may be the difference in the quality of life of an individual or a nation.  Adults who realize their God given talents and develop their natural abilities in many instances were children who had the presence of a loving father whose loyalty, fidelity, service and patience were the foundation upon which they grew spiritually and developed personally.  Moreover, as stewards of their children’s dreams, fathers have the express duty of delaying their own dreams and goals if necessary to ensure that their children reach a healthy and formidable start in life.

As I listened to this brief discourse, I thought of a friend whom I will call Greer whose recent choices and decisions remarkably illustrates this paternal lesson.  I greatly admire him for his integrity as a husband and father.  When I think of the men whom I would like to emulate, Greer always comes to mind.  Our paths crossed during the decade that I lived in Nashville.  We became friends through participation in a year-long community service organization.  My family and I moved to “Music City” so that I could assume the pastorate of a church.  Greer and his family came to town as he took a senior administrative position at one of the local institutions of higher learning.  As circumstances would reveal, we both eventually discovered that we were mismatched in the positions that we initially accepted as an impetus to move to Nashville.  Greer obtained a second university position from which he was terminated unjustly and disrespectfully.  Yet, the severance package enabled him to open his own business.  Within three years, he was well on his way to establishing a profitable and growing firm.  Intermittently, as the competing demands of marriage, family, work, church and community involvement allowed, we met for coffee usually at one of the city’s Starbucks.  We exchanged “trench warfare” stories as a means of encouraging and empowering each other.  Actually, we became accountability brothers in the Lord. 

On one occasion, Greer shared with me his decision to sell his business.  His resolution greatly puzzled me as he had invested three of the eight years necessary to sustain a profitable business.  Plus, he was now his own boss.  The regrettable circumstances that led to the start of his business could not reoccur.  He appeared to be on course to achieving permanently the financial stability that he desired for his wife and son.

In response to my facial expression of astonishment which had to be punctuated with raised eyebrows, inflated nostrils and penetrating smirks; Greer explained that he had a fundamental choice to make.  If he chose to spend the next five years solidifying the profitability of his business and the financial security of his family, he would miss his son’s years of adolescence and high school.  The cumulative sum of five year’s worth of sixteen to eighteen hour days would mean for all practical purposes that he would be a husband and father in residence only.  He would miss the spontaneous conversations that a puzzled teenage boy starts with his dad.  There would be the occasional impromptu trips to get pizza or grab a burger.  What should his son due when he develops problems with the opposite sex?  Should he schedule an appointment and hope his dad does not cancel at the last minute?  What about Greer’s responsibility to demonstrate to his son the practicalities of becoming a man as his son encounters the various rites of passage?  He raised these questions among others to depict the stark decision before him.  To my great pleasure, Greer straightforwardly, definitively and calmly said that he chose his son.

Greer reasoned that he would have another opportunity, should it be God’s will, to own a successful and profitable business.  However, he would have only one chance to share his son’s adolescence.  Those precious and formative years are given to fathers only once in a lifetime.  If Greer is meant to have his own firm again, divine providence will align the meticulous details and favorable circumstances.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt, neither human power nor celestial grace would return the loss years of his son’s transition to early adulthood.  As a consequence and as a dedicated father, Greer made the wisest choice of committing himself to job of stewardship of his son’s goals and dreams.