Lisa Barry: Have you ever considered the idea that you represent God in the eyes of your children? It almost sounds heretical, doesn't it? But as we'll find out today, that's the way it is until a child is old enough to make a distinction between their earthly father and another heavenly one. So does that put just a little pressure on all of us as parents? I'd say so. Elisabeth Elliot talks more about the high calling of parenthood on today's Gateway To Joy program. Whether you're in the early stages of childrearing or halfway through the process, I know you'll find insights to apply in your own situation. And now, let's hear from Elisabeth.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking with you again today on the subject of "A Child is a Father's Call."

If God has given you a child, then God is calling you to father that child. Too often fathers leave the work of raising the child to the mother. After all, she's better at it. She bore the child. She feeds the child. She's with the child the most time. But God specifically assigned to fathers the duty of bringing up their children in the admonition of the Lord. It's a serious call.

A listener wrote that she enjoys my program. But she said, "I hear words that are not always the words I wanted to hear. But God knew they were words I needed to hear." It's my prayer today that some father will hear wise words written early in this century. The author was Philip E. Howard. He was my grandfather. The book is out of print. It's called Father and Son. But here is what he says in his book.

First of all, let me review briefly the little story that he quoted from Laura Richards' book, The Golden Windows. An angel was hurrying along on important business, and he was waylaid by a king and a duke and a bishop, who needed his help. But he said he was on a matter of importance. The matter of importance turned out to be a little child who was crying because he couldn't find his mother. When he had found the mother for the child, then he went back to the duke and the bishop and the king. He said, "Are you there? Now I can attend to your little matters." I don't believe it's a small matter at all to reach out and love a child.

Reading from Philip E. Howard's book, "Unless the father recognizes that the prolonged infancy of his child is very rich in these matters of importance, he will have no adequate conception of what has occurred from month to month and what can be brought to pass in the life of the little one for whom he has so great a responsibility. Whence does the little child derive his idea of God? He is soon told by someone that God is his Heavenly Father. But what idea of God does the word 'father' convey to him?

Do you agree with S. D. Gordon in his Quiet Talks on Home Ideals when he says, 'Father and mother are as God to the child? That is to say, they are to the child in the place of God, until the child's awakening thought can be transferred to his parent's God and then find out how much more God is than they, and yet simply more, not different in kind.

We are telling him by our lives what God is, if we are. Or maybe what He isn't. Whatever we are telling with presence and life that God is in the child's thought.'

It is in the life of the very little child that the thought of God as a Father so readily finds its place and influence. A man may think that the mother, in her tenderness and faithfulness and loving care, will sufficiently verify by her life and words the thought of God's heavenly care; and that the father may wisely be a sympathetic onlooker, rather than a constant participant in the details of the picture of a Heavenly Father that is taking shape in the child's soul. But the father cannot avoid this, even if he would.

Far better is it for him to recognize the mothering duty that is his own from the beginning and to enter into the significance of the profound truth, back of Mr. Gordon's story who came to understand what fatherhood can mean.

'A minister,' writes Mr. Gordon, 'was preaching to his home congregation on Sabbath morning. His son, five years old, sat in the minister's family pew with others there. The strain of life had been too much for the mother's strength. The tether of life had worn thin and raveled out and then parted. She had slipped away.

It was said in an undertone among the families of the church that the father of the boy, brokenhearted over the loss of his wife, ministered with his own hands to the little fellow's needs, doing what a mother's hands commonly do. He was preaching as usual this Sabbath morning and in his sermon he spoke of a mother's care. He said, "Who can take the place of a mother?"

His little son, listening intently, spoke out with the unconscious artlessness of a child, and with a slow speech and a thin treble of childish lips that could be distinctly heard in the quiet of the church, he said, "I think a father does very well."

A sudden hush cast its soft spell over the church, as the father swallowed something in his throat and with glistening eyes smiled bravely down into his son's little face, and then went quietly on with his sermon.'

For the fatherhood of God includes motherhood, and no father can rightly exclude from his own fatherhood the mothering that the true father gives to his little child. Every parent who dares to take upon himself the awful responsibility of calling a human life into being, who places himself in God's hands as the instrument of divine creative power, assumes a trust which should exclude every form of selfishness.

Beyond the right of being well born, every child has the right to the best training his parents can give. He has the right to the personal care of both father and mother, a care which can never be delegated to others without serious loss to the child." The personal care of both and mother can never be delegated to others without serious loss to both parent and child.

"It is a part of the holy intimacy of father and child that the father should learn very early the difference between doing things for and living with his boy. The little child is no less sensitive to the difference in the two attitudes than is the older child. His awakening awareness of the world about him seeks a sympathetic sharing of his thrilling experiences.

Thus, a little boy playing in a western room late one afternoon caught a glimpse of the wonderful autumn sunset through the trees. He stood erect. Then rushing to the window, he clambered up to a better point of view on the window seat and excitedly called to his father, 'Come, see, see,' pointing vigorously to the glow that had arrested his dawning appreciation of the beautiful. The father hurried to the little fellow's side and shared his eagerness as together they saw the boy's first keenly realized sunset.

Did this incident have any part in that boy's steadily increasing and intelligent love of nature as the years have brought him into many glad experiences from the out-of-doors?"

I'm so thankful, as I'm reading this book by my grandfather, that he has all these illustrations in here, which include my father. It certainly was my grandfather who awakened in my father the love of birds and sunsets and mountains and the forests and waterfalls. We six children inherited from our father--we learned by watching him a tremendous joy and appreciation of God's outdoors.

"The father learned a lesson in sharing when watching one of his small boys busily at work with building blocks. From his armchair, the man ventured one or two off-hand architectural suggestions, whereupon the little chap remarked wistfully, 'I like it better when you play on the floor with me.' On the floor it was, the next instant.

And on the floor of the boy's unfolding experiences, with the boy, not towering above him, that father says that it has been since then his desire and purpose to live. Living with the small boy involves many responsibilities and privileges that a more remote and magisterial attitude never knows. A man soon realizes how imitative a little boy can be, if he is with his boy enough to make observations. Intimacy increases imitativeness, and hence a high degree of responsibility on the man's part, for every habit, every peculiarity, good or otherwise, of his own.

A New England farmer, who very late in life became a father, was greatly taken with that baby boy of his. Almost as soon as the baby could talk and walk, he swore, innocently and naturally, as he asked for food. The father was genuinely distressed. He was a profane man himself, but he did not wish his boy to be like him in this.

'I don't know,' he complained in the boy's very presence, 'where that boy gets them cuss words. I keep him with me most of the time, and when he's around I never say a blank thing of that kind.'

What was the real trouble with that father? What is the difficulty with the man who passes on to his imitative little child a habit that he himself deplores? He cannot help passing on, in some degree, what he is and what he has in the intimacy of father and son."

I wish I had a chance to read all of every chapter. He says, "They remember the best about us to their joy, and to our shame that there was not more of the best to remember. They are learners, but what heaven-sent teachers they are."

I'm sure that one of the reasons that God gave children and animals to us was to humble us. A child is a father's call-a call to holiness and attention.

Lisa Barry: Well, Father's Day is right around the corner, and I know many of you will wait until the last minute and then rush out to buy a tie or a pair of socks. I'd like to be the one to challenge you to take care of this important gift matter early this year.

Our Father's Day gift package contains so many resources that will build him up in one of the most important areas of his life. From my experience, men don't always talk about parenting as much as women do. But when they find a teaching that makes sense to them, they are quick to apply it. Imagine what an encouragement Dad will receive from all the resources that are included in this Father's Day gift packet. Give us a call to find out what's all included.

Here's our number: 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Or you can write to us at: Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Our Internet ministry address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow we'll hear more about the high calling of fatherhood the next time we meet for Gateway To Joy.