This is 1963.

From deep in the canyoned aisles of a supermarket comes what sounds like a small-scale bus wreck followed by an air raid. If you followed the running box-boy armed with mop and broom, you would come upon a young father, his three-year old son, an upturned shopping cart, and a good part of the pickles’ shelf---all in a heap on the floor.

The child, who sits on a plastic bag of ripe tomatoes, is experiencing what might nicely be described as "significant fluid loss." Tears, mixed with mucus from a runny nose, mixed with blood from a small forehead abrasion, mixed with saliva drooling from a mouth that is wide open and making a noise that would drive a dog under a bed. The kid has also wet his pants and will likely throw up before this little tragedy reaches bottom. He has that "stand back, here it comes" look of a child in a pre-urp condition. The small lake of pickle juice surrounding the child doesn’t make rescue any easier for the supermarket 911 squad arriving on the scene.

The child is not hurt. And the father has had some experience with the uselessness of the stop-crying-or-I’ll-smack-you syndrome and has remained amazing quiet and still in the face of the catastrophe.

The father is calm because he is thinking about running away from home. Now. Just walking away, getting into the car, driving away somewhere down South, changing his name, getting a job as a paperboy or a cook in an all-night diner. Something---anything---that doesn’t involve contact with three-year-olds.

Oh sure, someday he may find all this amusing, but in the most private part of his heart he is sorry he has children, sorry he married, sorry he grew up, and above all, sorry that this particular son cannot be traded in for a model that works. He will not and cannot say these things to anybody, ever, but they are there and they are not funny.

The box-boy and the manager and the accumulated spectators are terribly sympathetic and consoling. Later, the father sits in his car in the parking lot holding the sobbing child in his arms until the child sleeps. He drives home and carries the child up to his crib and tucks him in. The father looks at the sleeping child for a long time. The father does not run away from home.

Same man paces my living room, carelessly cursing and weeping by turns. In his hand is what’s left of a letter that has been crumpled into a ball and then uncrumpled again several times. The letter is from his sixteen-year-old son (same son). The pride of his father’s eye---or was until today’s mail.

The son says he hates him and never wants to see him again. The son is going to run away from home. Because of his terrible father. The son thinks the father is a failure as a parent. The son thinks the father is a jerk.

What the father thinks of the son right now is somewhat incoherent, but it isn’t nice.

Outside the house it is a lovely day, the first day of Spring. But inside the house, it is more like Apocalypse Now, the first day of one man’s next stage of fathering. The old gray ghost of Oedipus has just stomped through his life. Someday---some long day from now---he may laugh about even this. For the moment there is only anguish.

He really is a good man and a fine father. The evidence of that is overwhelming. And the son is quality-goods as well. Just like his father, they say.

"Why did this happen to me?" the father shouts at the ceiling.

Well, he had a son. That’s all it takes. And it doesn’t do any good to explain about that right now. First you have to live through it. Wisdom comes later. Just have to stand there like a donkey in a hailstorm and take it!

Same man and same son. The son is twenty-eight now, married, with his own three-year-old son, home, career, and all the rest. The father is fifty.

Three mornings a week I see them out jogging together around 6:00 AM. As they cross a busy street, I see the son look both ways, with a hand on his father’s elbow to hold him back from the danger of oncoming cars, protecting him from harm. I hear them laughing as they run on up the hill into the morning. And when they sprint toward home, the son doesn’t run ahead but runs alongside his father at his pace.

They love each other a lot. You can see it.

They are very care-full of each other---they have been through a lot together, but it’s all right now.

One of their favorite stories is about once upon a time in a supermarket. . . .

And this story is always. It’s been lived thousands of times, over thousands of years, and literature is full of examples of tragic endings, including that of Oedipus. The sons leave, kick away and burn all bridges never to be seen again. But sometimes (more often than not, I suspect) they come back in their own way and in their own time and take their fathers by their arms. That ending is an old one, too. The father of the Prodigal Son could tell you.

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, Robert Fulghum, 1988, 91-95.)

Many good things are suggested by the above story. One is that a parent’s relationship with his child changes as the child matures. You have a different relationship with a small child than you do with a teenager. Grown children must be treated differently than young children still at home. Also parents must keep on praying and waiting for their children to mature. They do most often come back if the bridges between you and them have not been burned. If the child has burned the bridge, the parent must help them to reconstruct it again.

I like the following article by Paul Harvey.

At a time when being a buddy to one’s son is popular, I am going to stay a father. I believe it may yet prove to be a bit of sad psychology when dads are called Peter, Jim, Art or Jack by their children. When Spock, Freud, Dewey, and William James have conspired to make dad a minor stockholder on the home’s board of directors; when women’s rights, civil rights, people right’s, children right’s and property rights have made it wrong for fathers to speak with authority, I am going to stay a father.

If a gap exists between my sons and daughters and me, I am going to work hard to understand. But, I am also going to work hard to be understood.

When they tell it like it is, I will listen, even if I like it better like it was. If old-fashioned things such as prayer, Bible study, worship and faith in God ever seem to my children to be out of it, square, or whatever---I trust God’s help to have faith enough to yet pray for them, and I pledge with Job to offer up additional sacrifices for them.

With love in our home, I will answer their questions about the facts of life, but at nudeness and lewdness I refuse to wink. Drinking and smoking are as out of place in my home as profanity and the plague. And, if experimentation with drugs or marijuana is ever a problem, it will be a violation of my prayer and request. No laissez-faire attitude will be accepted here---even if the weed is legalized and social tripping becomes as acceptable as social drinking.

I want my children to know that I make mistakes, that I am foolish, proud, and often inconsistent. But I will not tolerate that as an excuse for my hypocrisy. I ask them to help me change, as children should, and to expect me to help them change in the methods expected of a parent. Others may look at the under 30 crowd for the wisdom to throw away the past and to say what will remain for future generations; others may let the offspring in the house determine foods, the music and the spending of the household, but I am going to stay a father.

A drawing with an interesting caption. I have a drawing of a father standing looking at his young son painting the wall in the house. The son obviously is not supposed to be painting the wall. The caption has the father saying to his son, "Since I cannot remember anything that Dodson or Cosby wrote about what I should do under such circumstances, I am going to count to ten and then wear you out!"

There are at least two groups of fathers addressed in Scripture. They are those who are named and those not named addressing all fathers. It is to this last group that I would like to turn for our lesson.

Where art thou? I realize that this is directly addressed to Adam, but Adam also stands representatively as the head of mankind physically. His very name means man. After Adam and Eve sinned against God, they tried to hide from Him among the trees of the Garden. God called out to Adam, "Where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9.) Fathers, where are you spiritually?

This is a very important question for all fathers. Everything else that we say is based upon this. If fathers are not seeking God’s will, they will fail as fathers. They will fail in the most important area of all. Adapting the words of Jesus, What will it profit if you gain the whole world for your children, but do not guide them spiritually?

Often we hear that there are three dispensations in the Bible: the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian. But the truth is that they do not stop and begin one after the other, especially the Patriarchal. Fathers are addressed directly through out the Bible, not just before the Law of Moses. Fathers have always been given the responsibility of guiding their families. I would note with you that God addressed Adam not Eve. The patriarchal system continues to this day.

We know what Adam said in response to God. He began to make excuse as to why he disobeyed the command of God not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What do you say to God’s question addressed to all fathers, Where are you spiritually? Parents do not have much time after children are born until significant decisions will be made about how the children will be raised. Jewish parents circumcised their sons on the eighth day. I would suggest that Christian parents do not have much time either before important questions will need to be addressed. Will you teach your children about God when you walk by the way, when you sit down, and when you rise from sleep? Will you bring them to worship? Parents need to have a secure faith in God when their children are born.

I have written unto you. The apostle John addressed fathers, young men and little children. He said to them:

"I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because you have known the Father." (I John 2:12-13.) Verse fourteen repeats verse thirteen. Perhaps, the aged apostle is getting a little old and forgetful.

He says to the fathers that they had known him who is from the beginning (that is, the Word from 1 John 1:1-3). The "fathers" are those among the Christians who are mature in the faith. The "children" were the recent converts. The "young men" are those who had reached maturity and possessed great spiritual strength in the faith. (Commentary on Peter, John and Jude, Guy N. Woods, 235.)

It is interesting that fathers, physical ones, are used in Scripture to describe those who are mature in faith. Earthly fathers need to be mature both physically and spiritually in order to guide their families. Unless the father is mature in both senses, they cannot lead their families.

Provoke them not to wrath. The familiar words of Paul to the Ephesians are: "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." (Eph. 6:4.) There is a positive thing commanded that fathers should do as well as a negative thing that they should be cautious about.

This caution to Christian fathers is significant. In the ancient world, men had absolute power over their families---children, wives and servants. Christianity brought many good changes that based on those relationships on love and proper respect for one another. Husbands were told to love their wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Here fathers are told to be careful that, in exercising discipline and control over their children, they do not provoke them to wrath. A good way to know if a child has been provoked to wrath is the response of the child to the father behind his back. How do the children really feel about him? Do they respect him or only fear him when he is present?

It is a delicate balance that fathers must constantly weigh. Too much control and discipline can drive the child away and provoke them to anger. Too little control and permissiveness is not bringing them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. Added to that balance is the difficulty that all children are not alike and should be treated differently. But generally, the goal is to allow your children more and more freedom as they grow older. You can provoke an older child to wrath by not allowing them the freedom to make their own choices. It is generally better to make the mistake of too much trust than that of too much control, especially with older children.

Some people enjoy the power that comes with controlling others. Parenting is not for your benefit, but for the children’s. We should not love to give commands for no real good reason. One teacher said, If you are going to tell your children not to eat those green apples, supposedly because they will hurt their stomachs, then at least be ready to tell them where some ripe ones are. When you have to say no to your children, be ready to give a positive alternative. This will keep from provoking them to wrath. When we tell them no to sin, then we must be ready to show them that there is something better.