Families Need Fathers

Children, honour your father and mother; fathers, bring up your children with Christian discipline. Ephesians 6: 2

Although Samson’s father and mother gave him a nanny when he was small, they made sure that they gave prime time to playing with their child. They made little plays about the Christian festivals together, and they read together.
At the early age of five Samson proudly announced that he wanted to go to school – to the School for Christ made famous by Illtyd, for boys who would go on to be ordained into the Christian ministry. At first, Samson’s father Amon opposed this. He wanted his son to follow a career that would bring in money and which would continue the family’s links with high society. The issue became an almost daily battle with his wife. However, God spoke powerfully to Amon in a dream. This clarified for him that this plan was not just a wish of Samson or of his wife, it was the will of God. Amon and his wife, although she was again pregnant, rose up with one united purpose to introduce Samson to his new school.

When you face God in prayer, become in your thoughts like a speechless babe. Do not utter before God anything which comes from knowledge, but approach God with childlike thoughts, and so walk before God as to be granted that fatherly care which fathers give their children in their infancy.
Isaac of Nineveh 7th. c

Father
give us all fatherly care.
Help fathers to reflect you
in the way they discharge their responsibilities.
May they be priests
to their spouses and to their children