Re-Post

From Father's Day 2006:

I heard a story yesterday that challenged me , it went like this:

" Down in Sulphur Louisiana there is a grave unlike any I have seen in all my years. There is a grave for an 8 year old girl with a small children's playhouse built on top of it. The father of this young lady was a construction worker who worked very hard to provide for his family. He was never aloof and spent the time he could, when he wasn't exhausted, with his family. When his daughter was 6 years old she asked her daddy if it wouldn't be too much trouble could he build her a playhouse. He responded that he would be happy to do it, as soon as the job he was working on finished up. That job ran into the next project and soon his work projects began to overlap as they so often do with all of us. Two years later, the young girl was playing ball in her front yard with a friend when their ball rolled into the street. As she ran after the ball, she did not see the oncoming car that ended her earthly life in a fraction of a second. The father of this young girl could not be consoled by the countless well wishers that attended his daughter's funeral. Everyone told him what a wonderful girl she was, and that someday he would most certainly see her again in the Kingdom of Heaven. These things he knew and took comfort in that knowledge, yet nothing could take the burden he felt in his heart that he had let his little girl down by never building her a playhouse as she had asked. The same evening of her burial he took the needed materials to the cemetery and built her the playhouse she had always wanted.
Too little, too late."

The moral of the story for fathers, and mothers, is that your time is now. Your child or children will be different from one day to the next and you will never have that time again. We are all busy, and we should always try hard to provide for our families but the one thing we can never earn more of is time.

It reminds of a time when I was visiting with one of my old Navy buddies and I began to complain about some inconsequential fact of life. He looked across the bed of his truck and said " You have everything." How very humbling that moment was for me, and something I will never forget.

Enjoy your children today.

 

Psa 127:3	Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Psa 127:4	Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth.
Psa 127:5	How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed When they speak with their enemies in the gate.