The Cost His Father Paid

A young boy had to feed his father every day when he came home from school. His father had been so injured and couldn’t do many things for himself and to help with things the mother gave him one job to do and that was to feed his father every day, once a day.

But on this particular day, the boy, now a teenager, didn’t want to do it. “I never get to do what I want to do. Never get to go with my friends after school because I always have to feed him. Why do I have to do this all the time?”

His mother believed it was now time for her son to know the whole story about his dad. She sat him down and began, “Not long after we were married, we had a fire in our home in the middle of the night. A neighbor called the fire dept. and then came into the house to get us out. We both got out fine but when it was discovered that our baby was still in the house, your father didn’t hesitate. He ran back into the burning house and was only able to rescue the baby by jumping out the second story window onto the ground below. The baby was saved and was without injury, but your father was badly injured in the process. The heat from the fire burned your father’s throat and lungs, and the fall broken his back and paralyzed him. That baby was you, son. She got up and went to back to doing things in the house.

After a long time, the young man got up and went over to the table and picked up the plate of food and the fork and sat down in front of his dad. Now that he knew the cost that his father paid for his life, and why he needed to feed his dad everyday, the boy saw his father differently, and never had a problem willingly feeding him everyday.