I had a good father. Among other things, he taught me to fish, split wood, and work hard. He believed in doing things well and would often say, “It is easier to do something right the first time than to explain why you didn’t.” He was part of a generation of men where women were the primary nurturers and men were the providers.

Despite feeling at retirement as many men do that he had worked too hard for too little for too long, he really was an involved, responsible, and committed father. I have many pleasant memories of my dad. The earliest, from ages five to eight, are watching with him the TV shows Mod Squad, UFO, Adam 12, and Emergency. I remember being with him watching television when Muhammad Ali won fight after fight, Richard Petty or Mario Andretti won race after race, Evel Knievel attempted his jump of the Snake River Canyon, Bruce Jenner became the world’s greatest athlete (what happened there?!), and the gymnast Nadia Comaneci earned her perfect tens.

One of our biggest points of connection as I entered later adolescence was reading The Hardy Boys books together. I had read these and other books voraciously for years, thanks primarily to my mom’s efforts in encouraging me to read, and I shared a couple of my favorites with my dad. He read them, thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and then joined me in these adventures. He loved magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and, like MacGyver, he could make amazing things out of few or discarded materials. Ingenuity was his specialty, and in second and third grades he helped me win first place in the school’s science fairs. We made a water drop microscope one year, and a working telegraph the other.

He was not a big sports guy, but we played catch and Frisbee in the back yard on many occasions.  We both got seriously into ping-pong when I was eleven or twelve, sometimes playing daily whenever he got home from work.  The closeness my father and I shared in my later teens and early twenties is one reason I love the 2013 film About Time. Several times throughout the movie, the father and son are depicted talking together while playing Ping-Pong. This simple setting provides cohesiveness for one of the movie’s central themes: delight in the father-son relationship—an experience I tasted in my relationship with my dad.

When I was a young teen, he would often listen and laugh as I told him the plot of a movie and afterwards compliment my story-telling. When I was fifteen and sixteen, he regularly came to my basketball games and cheered me on. One memory I have from my later teens is coming home from work and hearing him listen to my favorite artist at that time, Keith Green. I knew he hated his voice, so I asked, “What are you listening to that for?” He said, “I just wanted to learn more about why you appreciate him.” He was entering my world—that goes a long way in connecting with teens.

This is like what the triune God, “Our Father,” did in the incarnation—that is, in sending Jesus to be born into this world:

• He entered our world: “So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.” (John 1:14, NLT)
• He experienced the power of temptation and relates to our struggles: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:14, ESV)
• He is the ultimate example of a loving father: “For God [the Father] was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor. 5:19, NLT)

It is my prayer that regardless of what your relationship is, was, wasn’t, or could have been with your earthly father, that today you would experience more of the favor and delight of the Heavenly Father!

Happy Father’s Day!