| Find: |
|
Jeremy Del Rio: Commit to the Fatherless this Father's Day
The scene was gory and tragic, every father's worst nightmare. The van carrying Matt Stevens' two oldest sons had flipped on a country road and 10-year-old Caleb was thrown underneath the wreckage. Big brother Josh, himself just 11, comforted "Cub" as they waited for Dad's arrival.
Giant slayers
The Stevens family was in the middle of one of four summer missions trips that fateful morning of Aug. 5, 2005, as they prepared to lead 40 youths for a week of compassion ministry in downtown Baltimore.
Matt arrived at Cub's side as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Cradling his son in his arms, Matt told him it was okay to go home to Jesus. Cub closed his eyes, gasped seven more times, and breathed his last.
Something happened on the way from that roadside to the gravesite. Hundreds of people from 11 states came to celebrate the legacy of a giant slayer in the tradition of his biblical namesake. It's a tradition that had previously been passed on to me from my own father just as Caleb had learned it from his.
‘Give me this mountain'
When I was no older than Cub, Rick Del Rio, my father – an unconventional street preacher turned church planter in Manhattan's Lower East Side – preached a message that captured my heart: Give me this mountain. He talked about Old Testament Caleb, an 85-year-old fighter determined to receive a promise he had held onto for 45 years, even though it meant contending with giants.
The message stuck mainly because I have watched Dad practice what he preached, walking with him along his journey. What a journey we've shared, one filled with lots of hostile, would-be giants, from drugs and poverty in a neighborhood the NYPD called one of the city's most dangerous to 9/11 relief. The occasional mishap and misstep pale next to the joy he now receives watching all three of his grown sons serving in urban ministry.
Children become who their dads make them
Children are more than repositories for dad's DNA. We become who our fathers make us. It's a sobering truth that Jesus put this way: "If you knew me, you would know my father also." He further explained: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." (John 5:19 NIV)
Caleb Stevens spent his last 24 hours leading youth in random acts of kindness, delivering food door-to-door in a mining community, and offering his father a hot cup of coffee. This was not exceptional. My own earliest memories of Caleb are as a freckle-faced 8-year-old running around a housing project picking up trash just because it was a nice thing to do, or when he would offer to clean up after a roomful of teenagers or to carry someone else's luggage twice his size.
Cub lived a life of service because that's what he saw his dad doing. Matt didn't just say, "Be kind," or "Do good." He showed him how. And Cub's life, short as it was, left an enduring legacy as a result, from Alabama to Massachusetts. Even at his funeral, seven guests received Jesus as Lord – poetically, one for each of Cub's final breaths this side of eternity.
At Cub's Celebration Service, he was eulogized with four words that just as easily could have described his father:
- Funny. He loved to laugh and make others laugh.
- Faith. He lived according to a can-do attitude.
- First. He always raced to be the first at everything, including opportunities to serve.
- Fruit. His life produced something worth passing on.
A Father's Day dilemma
Matt Stevens is a hero both for how he lives and for how he raises his boys. But what about the 24 million American children who live with absent fathers or the 20 million living in single-parent homes? Our neighbors, they attend school with our kids, worship at our churches, shop in our supermarkets, and hang out at our favorite diners.
Whom do they emulate? Whom do they celebrate?
According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, roughly 40 percent of children with absent fathers have not seen their father within the past year, 50 percent have never set foot in their father's home, and 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children.
Absenteeism's consequences are stark, with children of absent dads at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
Children without fathers need men who love Jesus to practice what God the Father teaches us.
Fatherless kids confront a land perilously filled with giants, yet there's a special place in God the Father's heart for them. They're not nameless and faceless to him. From the moment he first made a covenant with Israel, God declared that he would defend the cause of the fatherless (Deut. 10:12-22) and would provide for them (Deut. 14:29, 24:19-22, 26:12-15). In the Psalms, he pledged to "father the fatherless" (Ps. 68:4-6), a recurring theme throughout Scripture.
How many of us who claim God as our Father follow this example? Can it be said of us, with integrity as it was said of Jesus – "the firstborn of many brethren" – that those who know us can recognize a Heavenly Father who defends, provides for, and fathers the fatherless here on earth?
Caleb's promise to them
What might happen if Calebs throughout our nation actually embraced fatherless children the way our Heavenly Father has embraced us? If we became people fatherless children could trust? Ones who uphold their cause and fight their fight, who won't abandon them and will love them despite their secrets?
That's a mountain worth taking, no matter how long the fight.
Fathering the fatherless: Nine practical suggestions
1. Frame the issue so it's personal. Allow God to turn your heart toward a real child.
2. Ask God for eyes to see and ears to hear the need in your local context.
3. Take the initiative to reach out to the specific child, and his/her family, in creative ways.
4. Hold onto the relationship for the long-term.
5. Endure the down-times, misbehavior, and possible resentment that you're not biologically related.
6. Resist the urge to preach all the time. Meeting felt needs by being present and involved goes much farther than having all the right answers.
7. Invest in their future by exposing them to and even financing educational and professional opportunities.
8. Notice and praise both their character and achievements.
9. Guide them through life's milestones: school graduations, adolescence, first crushes, weddings, etc.
Recommended resources
Jeremy Del Rio is the proud father of Judah and directs Community Solutions, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in youth and organizational development. Visit him online at www.JeremyDelRio.com/blog. Visit Matt Stevens at www.ChainReaction.be and Rick Del Rio at www.agmin.org. ©Copyright 2006. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
RSS
Post new comment