What Does Dad Want?

What does dad want for father’s day?

Luke 15:11-32

Let’s start with a little trivia this morning. What day of the year are the most phone calls made???…… Mother’s day! It seems that on mother’s day everyone wants to call home and check in.

What do you think happens on father’s day? Any one want to make a Guess?

Fathers day it known for the most ….. Collect Calls.

A small boy said, "Father’s Day is just like Mother’s Day, only you don’t spend as much on the gift."

For the most part, Mom’s are blessed with the special ability of nurture and healing. They can often heal the body and soul of life’s hurts.

Father’s day seems like a day set aside as someone’s attempt of giving dads equal time. I know it was done with the right heart. But, it has never had the draw and impact that mother’s day has enjoyed.

--Two children came home from school and started begging their mother to allow them to take ownership of the classroom pet. This wonderful creature that the children wanted so much was a hamster named Davie.

Mom kept saying no and had plenty of good reason why the children could not bring Davie home.

It finally came down to an explanation that a pet is a lot of responsibility and work. As children do, they both promised to do everything to take care of Davie. And after hours of begging and promises Mom said, yes.

But she made it very clear that if the children stopped taking proper care that she would quickly make arrangements to find Davie a new home.

It had only been a couple of weeks when Mom had to constantly remind the children about feeding and watering and cleaning up. About two more weeks passed and mom started making calls and found a home for Davie.

She went into the living room to tell the children about her decision. She told them that Davie had become a lot of work for just one person. That they had not been much of help and that she found him a new home.

She was surprised when the children did not seem bothered by her announcement.

Then her daughter said, is it because he eats too much? Maybe they could find a way to help him eat less.

Mom said, that it was not the eating so much as the mess and the smell. And then there was all the extra work that she had to do cleaning up. The children seemed to understand and nodded in a sort of agreement and turned back toward their TV program. Mom went and picked up Davies’s cage and assorted supplies and headed back through the living room.

The kids saw her carrying the cage and started shouting, hey, what are you doing with Davie?

Mom responded, We just talked about this. Because of all the extra work and having to do it all by herself she had found Davie a new home.

The children said, “No not Davie, we thought you said daddy.”

Dads are different, Dads just seen to be like some of the tools in the garage that are just sitting there until you need them.

The current culture likes to laugh at dads and poke fun in all kinds of ways at the dads that are involved with their children. A bit different from the TV shows form the 50s and 60s where dad was a guide and had wisdom and reason.

We have gone from a time of TV character dads like Ward Cleaver, Ozzie Nelson, Howard Cunningham, and Mike Brady to Archie bunker, Al Bundy, and Homer Simpson.

I wonder how that has directly affected many young men’s view of fatherhood.

To modify a common phrase, “Dad’s don’t get no respect.”

We are not really talking about the ills of TV and culture today. We are here to consider our dads.

Dads are normally very different than moms and tend to be the one to fix broken stuff, solve certain logical problems, act as the provider and defender of the family, especially daughters.

I believe that most of us use our own fathers as a guide on what we believe God is like. If your father was distant or not there you probably feel that God is the same way.

Some of us have a real fear of our fathers. We fear punishment and rejection.

(Wait until your daddy Gets Home!) Dad was often used as the ultimate punishment machine. Some believe God is just waiting us for all of our mistakes.

OR for some, we may have found that we could not be good enough.

Perhaps it was grades, or friends and or any choices in your life that were judged harshly. And you just can’t see how you can satisfy your dad. We feel like God is disappointed in us.