Eight year old Jazmyn rides the bus to our Sunday School and usually arrives eager to sing and learn but it was a saddened Jazmyn who came through our doors one Sunday not too long ago. Her father had been killed in an accident and she was still dealing with the news. Of course we rallied around her in support and she was surprised when I prayed for her in our worship service that morning. Dads are important and the loss of one makes a difference to all of us.
In fact, a godly dad can make a difference to the world. Abraham was one example. Even his name means “father of many”, which was a bit ironic considering that he was unable to have children until his old age. God chose Abraham to become the father of a great nation and the father of faith to all believers because he was a dad who would command his children to “keep the way of the Lord” and to do righteousness and justice. (See Genesis 18:19.) The Bible mentions him by name 232 times and his reputation is such that Jews and Muslims around the world claim his heritage and Christians everywhere seek to emulate his great faith.
There are also fathers today who will never be famous but are making this world a better place by leading their families to keep the way of the Lord. It’s not easy and the sacrifice required runs counter to a pleasure seeking culture. It’s difficult but worth it. The man who leaves behind the heritage of godly children will have left his world in a little better shape than he found it. Unfortunately, those dads are becoming increasingly rare in our world.
You should know that when little Jazmyn was sad, it was not only because she had lost her father. It was because she had never known her father. She was grieving because she felt little over losing a dad she had never met and even to an eight year old that doesn’t seem right.
Unfortunately her story is not unusual because we live in a culture in which men bring children into the world and then casually walk away. The unfortunate result is that the number of single mothers in our country has increased from 3 million in 1970 10 million in 2003. That number is still increasing and children are suffering the consequences. Ann Coulter wrote a helpful column on the subject that you can find in her book, Guilty; Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America. This is her insight.
“Controlling for socioeconomic status, race, and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.”
Jazmyn’s grief is one shared by all too many of our children today – and not nearly enough of our adults.
