Elisabeth Elliot: "It is one of the needless tragedies of life that men thus lose their youthful joy and the zest of living, and with it, the real sympathy of their own boys."

Lisa Barry: I can remember as a child wanting to be a kindergarten teacher because I loved to play with children. As I grew, I stopped wanting to play with children and my interests changed. But I was certain I would always love to play with my own children. But here I am, a mother, and playing games is one of the last things I feel like doing. Maybe that's the sort of thing that the author of the quote we just heard was getting at. As adults, we often forget what it was like to be a child and lose something in the process.

Today on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot continues reading from her grandfather's book, FATHER AND SON. If you've got children, today's program is for you. Let's get started.

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, reading more from a book called FATHER AND SON. Yesterday I was talking about the importance of fathers knowing who their sons associate with.

"Within the same gang are boys who mean quite different things. They were not seen much in Dave's home. They met mostly at school, on the streets, usually in an incidental touch-and-go fashion, and sometimes in a clash with a tough bunch that tried to terrorize the town; sometimes playing circus or Indian or walking on stilts or coasting on the glare crust of snow on the steep Vermont hillsides.

"How much did Dave's father know about that gang? About Gene, on the one hand, and Charlie on the other? And how much of the home training, the home atmosphere, would go with Dave, when with a shout he would beat it out of the front gate and down the street in answer to the beckonings of the bunch in the distance?

"Eight years old, and even then an enthusiastic member of a social group outside the home. The outer contacts are inevitable. Dave cannot, should not, indeed, live on the inside of the front gate. Your problem as a father is not how to stave off as long as possible the schooling he gets and gives in his own boyhood social groups, but how to guide it and convert it into useful material for his total development.

"A father must find out what the influences are by quiet observation more than by close questioning. Sometimes too much questioning gives rise in the small boy's heart to the suspicion that his father does not really trust him. And if a boy comes under the sinister spell of that notion, then there is a barrier at once thrown up between himself and his father.

"An overnight in the open with the youngsters helps wonderfully to let the father get what the boys might call 'inside dope.' Some of the bunch come to the house in the late afternoon and pack their haversacks." That's an old-fashioned word for backpacks.

"Father, in old clothes, shoulders his haversack and blanket, while the little fellows trudge along with their outfit as they make their way through the town and over the hill and along the creek to the woods, where there's a grassy ravine and a spring of good water. Then come the delights of making camp; father, not bossing the job, but pitching right in as a hewer of wood and drawer of water and cooker of bacon, plus anything else that he ought to be.

"After supper, as the twilight falls and the night wind begins to whisper in the hemlocks, the campfire crackles. The little chaps gather around it for a talk and a sing. Father is just a boy with them, chipping in with the rest of the talk, but not swamping the youngsters with his mighty store of wisdom. A goodnight prayer together by and by seems to come in just right, and then the campers crawl into their shelter tents and presently their chatter dies away and sleep is upon them.

"But Father doesn't sleep at first. He is looking out at the stars above the hemlocks, listening to the wind in the trees, the breathing of the boys around him, and picturing to himself just who and what these little fellows are-his boy's chums. And he wonders not only what they mean to his boy, but how his boy is influencing them.

"In that brief evening, he has seen how quickly one boy leaps to wash the dishes, how another never knows where anything is, how another neatly avoids doing what he can switch over to anyone else to do. A little world of educational influences, as complex as the cosmic mind, is gathered around that miniature camp. It is very late when sleep comes to the man; very early when he emerges from the tent and shows a morning face with a cheery word to the little fellows who tumble out, ready for the new day.

"When the boy begins to show signs of belonging to a gang or bunch, then it is high time for the father to bestir himself and get counted in. He can be. He ought to be. Not as a mentor, not as a guardian, but as a real friend.

"In writing of some of the difficulties involved, Professor G. Walter Fisk wrote, 'The greater difficulty is the fact that the father in growing older has lost his youth, or rather, his youthfulness. He has forgotten how it seemed to be a boy. The interests, which absorbed him in his boyhood, have been submerged in the colder tides of later life. The idealism, maybe, and the hero worship and the noble altruism of adolescent days have been lost in the glare of life's realism.

'Imagination is dormant; memory is ineffective, dim and fickle. Boyish dreams and youthful visions are forgotten, and the feelings-the surest criterion of age-are greatly changed. The finer emotions and the naive enthusiasms, the man has lost forever; and with these, his lost youth.' It's one of the needless tragedies of life that men thus lose their youthful joy and the zest for living, and with it the real sympathy, of their own boys.

"During an amazing exhibition of a football game, a small boy of the neighborhood bunch stood gazing, awestruck, as he watched for the first time the lofty and successful flight of the ball. Then he strolled up to the man and remarked approvingly, 'Well, I see you haven't lost the use of your kicker.' Had that acquaintance on the improvised gridiron anything to do with the willingness of that boy, a few years later, to confide in his football friend at a time of serious crisis? What father can know just how far some of his hours of fellowship with his boys and their chums will lead him in service to them? Let him at least see to it that he belongs.

"The promotion from the kid to the guy class is a very real thing, and a boy gets there much earlier than his father may suppose. One of my own small friends in the neighborhood, I have noticed of late, hardly ever speaks with the other fellows as anything but guys. That word represents a horizontal section of the accumulated advance and upward growth of the boy, who belongs to the bunch, for there is obviously a far greater distinction in being a guy than in being a kid.

"To the preoccupied father, the distinction may seem rather too fine for practical purposes, but indeed it is in his recognition of what such things mean to the boy that he will find an intensifying of his fellowship with that boy." This, incidentally, was written more than 100 years ago, when there were the same distinctions between being a kid and being a boy.

"To see that little fellow riding his bicycle or playing football with the bunch or adding his part to accentuate the noise of the neighborhood, one would hardly have guessed that the question of a mode of baptism would have been occupying his thought at all. But so it was. And so it is with other boys in ways that fathers least suspect, as the little fellows begin to find their footing on the threshold of the door that swings out from the home.

"One reason why it is so needful to emphasize the often unexpected maturing of a little fellow's mind is found in the fact that fathers are so likely to plod along after the boy in the distant rear, without realizing that almost before they know it, the youngster is advancing in ways which the father had not noticed. Mothers often perceive the real state of things long before fathers do, and this is not in accord with what should be the true balance of rightful parental partnership.

"When the small boy begins to run with the bunch, the father must become a member, too. If that father is the right sort of guy, he will be welcomed. Oh, no, he doesn't need to be always there when anything is on, but he mustn't just glance around the corner of his newspaper when Little Bill is busting to tell him about a great thing the bunch did or plans to do. But he must put that paper clear down and really care to listen to all that Bill wants to say."

If it was an exercise for a tired father to have to put down his newspaper, what is it today to have to turn to off the TV?-when a man wants to come home, sink into his favorite chair, put his feet up and not be bothered by anything, except what he wants to look at on the screen.

"Bunch or no bunch, Little Bill is always glad to have a home base from which his excursions start and to which he can come back without getting snubbed or chilled. The pull of that home, when the father is his ever-ready sympathizing friend, will greatly contribute to correct any of the undesirable temporary allurements of the mixed influence beyond the gate.

But how can a busy father help to get the right books into the hands of the right boy?" There's a whole chapter in my grandfather's book called FATHER AND SON on "What Books a Child Is Exposed To." I'm very thankful for the fact that I grew up in a home where the walls were lined with bookcases. Almost every evening after supper, we would all sit down in the living room. Sometimes our father would read a little bit to us out loud. As we grew older, we would just sit quietly, each of us reading a book. I wonder if that ever happens anymore in today's homes.

May I earnestly ask that you who are fathers listen carefully to this advice of a wise man of 100 years ago. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Acknowledge your helplessness and your eager desire to do right by your children.

Lisa Barry: I'm sure we would all nod in agreement to that. I hope you've enjoyed reading this book, FATHER AND SON, as much as I have. Even though the target is men, I've gleaned lots of practical application in my own life, like putting down a book or a pen or the phone to give my children the sort of full attention that demonstrates how much I care. There are more lessons to learn from this book, and I hope you'll decide to purchase it and find out for yourself.

The title again is FATHER AND SON. The cost is $15.50. Be sure and specify that it's the book you want when you write. You can mail that to Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call toll-free: 1-800-759-4JOY. Have you found our Web site yet? You'll find everything there is to know about Gateway To Joy right there. That address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy is a listener-supported production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow Elisabeth reads more from her grandfather's book about taking your son into your confidence. That's next time on Gateway To Joy.