... he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse.
-- Malachi 4:6 (HCSB)
Dads, to put it plainly, we have not done the job. I can sit here and type statistics at you for the rest of the day, but we've heard it all over and over. We see the news. Teen pregnancy, drug use, school shootings, etc. If we look at it from the perspective of Malachi 4:6, we can see that our land is indeed cursed.
I promised no statistics, but here's one we should all hear. Tonight, 27 million children (that's 27,000,000) will go to bed without their father in the home. Research from the National Center for Fathering (www.fathers.com), shows that the father's absence in the home is "linked to higher rates of poverty, failure in school, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, violent crime, depression, and ultimately a loss of hope."(1)
I've set up Game7Dads and Game7Dads.com to help my family and others out there who would like to reverse the trend of father-absence in our country. To put in in terms of sports, which most guys can understand, we're in Game 7 of a big playoff series, it's halftime, and folks, we've taken a beating. However, as a good coach would tell you, there's still time to step up and win this series, and give our children what they need to fight the next series.
As I build this program, keep in mind that everything posted here is for ALL dads. That includes new dads, old dads, granddads, step-dads, single dads, divorced dads, and adoptive dads like me. It's also for men who may not even have children, but have chosen to play a role in the life of a child who otherwise would not have a present father figure. Let's always remember that the goal is not only to be fathers in our home, but to enlist other dads to get in the game as well.
Let's turn it around, guys. Let's win Game 7.
Sources:
- Carey Casey. (2007). Championship Fathering: What Is It?. In Fathers.com. Retrieved 5/3/2012, from http://www.fathers.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=12&Itemid=150.
