FAITHFULNESS
Bestow on me, O Lord my God,
understanding to know You,
diligence to seek You,
and a faithfulness
that may finally embrace You,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
—Thomas Aquinas
F. B. Meyer signed many of his letters, “Yours to count on.”
A little thing is a little thing; but faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.
God bases His rewards not on conspicuousness of service but on fidelity to opportunity.
—G. Campbell Morgan
It’s not too difficult to be relevant if you don’t care about being faithful. And it’s not too difficult to be faithful if you don’t care about being relevant.
—John Stott
A shepherd and his small dog once came to live in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. The animal was so loyal to his owner that he followed him everywhere. Sometime later the man died and was buried in a local cemetery. Hardly anyone noticed the little dog trailing behind the mourners; but after they left, the dog sat down on the shepherd’s grave. He stayed there not for a day, a week, or a month, but the rest of his life! Interested people gave him food and water, and he never left the spot where his master was laid to rest. After twelve years, he finally died at his post of vigilance. That was faithfulness!
Certain officers once approached Napoleon to recommend a young captain for promotion. Napoleon asked, “Why do you recommend this man?” Their answer was that through courage and cleverness he had recently won a signal victory. “Good,” said Napoleon, “but what did he do the next day and the next day after?” On investigation they found that he had gone back to his usual unzealous and casual manner of life. Napoleon therefore refused to advance the man. He was looking for consistency and steadfastness.
After the tragic bombing of a marine base in Beirut in October 1983, the steadfastness of one young soldier moved and heartened Americans back home. He had been critically wounded in the explosion of the revamped hotel where he and his fellow marines had been staying. Many of his buddies had been killed. He was covered with bandages and a jungle of tubes were attached to his body. He could not speak. Yet when he was visited by General Paul Kelly, Commandant of the Marine Corps, he indicated that he wanted to write something. Painfully, he wrote the words semper fi, a shortened form of the U.S. Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, which means, “Always faithful.”
Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.
—C. S. Lewis
FAME
An Olympic Star put an advertisement in a newspaper to sell the gold medal that he won for javelin throwing in 1928.
The former athlete, now living in Sweden and half crippled with rheumatism, was out of a job and short of money.
“You can’t eat medals,” was his rueful comment.
He hoped to realize enough money from the sale of his Olympic medal and all his sporting trophies to relieve the problems that have confronted him since his fame as a winner faded.
All is ephemeral—fame and the famous as well.
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
FAMILIARITY
Familiarity breeds contempt, but only with contemptible people or things.
—Phillips Brooks
FAMILY (Also see CHILD REARING, FATHERS, HOME, MOTHERS, and PARENTING)
If I would get to the highest place in Athens, I would lift up my voice to say, “What mean ye, fellow citizens, that ye turn every stone to scrape wealth together, and take so little care of your children to whom ye must one day relinquish all?”
—Socrates
Five-year-old Brian was impressed by the story of Simeon the Stylite, a Syrian hermit who lived in the fifth century. This man was admired as a saint because he lived for more than thirty-five years on a platform atop a high pillar. Determined to follow Simeon’s example, Brian put the kitchen stool on the table and started his perilous climb. When his mother heard some strange sounds in the kitchen, she came in and shouted, “Brian! Get down before you break your neck!” As the youngster obeyed, he muttered, “You can’t even become a saint in your own house.”
FAMILY PRAYERS
Little Anna’s parents were not Christians. When they gathered round the table for their meals, they never asked a blessing.
One time her uncle came to spend a few weeks with them. During his stay, he was invited to ask a blessing on their meals.
The morning after he had left them, the family gathered around the table and were about to start breakfast when little Anna, who sat next to her father, looked up to him and whispered, “Is there no God today, Papa?” This touching question of his child went straight to his heart.
The parents of little Willie were not Christians, but they were respectable and taught him the Lord’s Prayer and “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” with the appropriate prayer, “God bless Papa, and Mama, and Willie, and make me a good little boy.”
One evening as he finished his prayer, he said to his mother, “Does you pray Mama?” “No, darling.” “Does Daddy pray?” “I never heard him pray.” “Then why do you make me pray?”
“That you may be good. Don’t you want to be good?”
“Oh, yes, I want to be good. Then why don’t you and Daddy pray?”
“We’ve gotten out of the spirit, I guess.”
“Well, Mama, don’t you think you and Daddy are expecting too much of a little fellow like me? Am I supposed to do all the praying for the family? Seems to me you and Papa might help me a little.”
After that, they did!
A little boy said, “Mom, who’s Book is that?” “Oh,” she said, “That’s God’s Book, don’t touch it.” “Well,” he said, “let’s send it back to Him; we don’t read it.”
Among the property owned jointly by two young brothers who were carpenters was the old tumbled-down place of their birth. One of the brothers was soon to be married and the old house was to be torn down and a new one erected on its site. For years neither of the brothers had visited the cottage, as it had been leased.
As they entered now and started the work of demolishing the place, again and again floods of tender memories swept over them. By the time they reached the kitchen they were well-nigh overcome with their emotions. There was the place where the old kitchen table had stood—with the family Bible—where they had knelt every evening. They were recalling now with a pang how in later years they had felt a little superior to that time-honored custom carefully observed by their father.
Said one, “We’re better off than he was, but we’re not better men.”
Linda, age nine, went with a neighbor playmate to a revival meeting one night. In telling her experience to the family she said, “The preacher asked everyone who had family commotions at their house to raise their hands, so I did.”
FANATIC
A fanatic is a person who redoubles his energies when he has forgotten his aim.
A fanatic is a person who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
—Winston Churchill
Samuel Johnson once said of a man, “That man has only one idea and it is wrong.”
FATHERS
“What is a father?” A boy answered, “A father is a person who has pictures in his wallet where he used to have money.”
The quality of a child’s relationship with his or her father seems to be the most important influence in deciding how that person will react to the world.
—John Nicholson
The Prayer of a Father
Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak … and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid. One who will be proud and unbending in defeat … but humble and gentle in victory … a son who will know that to know himself … is the foundation stone of all true knowledge. Rear him … I pray … not in the paths of ease and comfort … but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenges. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm … here let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men. Build me a son whose heart will be clean … whose goal will be high. One who will learn to laugh … yet never forget how to weep. One who will reach into the future … and yet never forget the past. And after all these are his … add … I pray … enough of a sense of humor so that he may always be serious … yet never take himself too seriously … a touch of humility, so that he will always remember the simplicity of true greatness … the open mind of true wisdom … the meekness of true strength. Then … I … his father … will dare in the sacred recesses of my own heart … to whisper … “I have not lived in vain!”
There are little eyes upon you, and they are watching night and day;
There are little ears that quickly take in every word you say;
There are little hands all eager to do everything you do.
And a little boy who’s dreaming of the day he’ll be like you.
You’re the little fellow’s idol, you’re the wisest of the wise,
In his little mind about you, no suspicions ever rise;
He believes in you devoutly, holds that all you say and do,
He will say and do in your way when he’s grown up to be like you.
There’s a wide-eyed little fellow who believes you’re always right,
And his ears are always open and he watches day and night;
You are setting an example everyday in all you do,
For the little boy who’s waiting to grow up to be like you.
If you follow the steps of your father, you learn to walk like him.
—West African proverb
Alan Redpath, former pastor of Moody Memorial Church, tells of the time his father, after a brief period of tension in the home, looked across the table at his wife and said, “I’m so sorry I spoke to you the way I did. I’m ashamed of myself.”
Redpath said that although at the time he was not a Christian, he went to his room after the meal, knelt, and prayed, “O God, I thank you for a father like that. Make me more like him.”
If I had a son, I’d do one thing. I’d tell him the truth. I’d never let him catch me in a lie. And in return, I’d insist that he tell the truth. When children go astray, it isn’t the fault of the children but of their parents. A spoiled boy grows into a spoiled man. I’d try to be a pal to my boy. I’d have my son go to church. What’s more, I’d go with him. But above everything else, I’d try to understand my son. For if I didn’t, I’d be a failure as a dad!
—J. Edgar Hoover
Children of fathers who feel good about themselves and have high self-esteem grow up with more confidence and a higher opinion of themselves.
A recent study of 105 mothers, fathers, and their children over fourteen years old found that a dad’s self-esteem is more critical than a mom’s in the way children feel about themselves.
—Christian Inquirer
Even though he may be a senator, a governor, a president of a college, or a top industrialist, a man just might make his most significant contribution to America by the kind of far-reaching but unsung kind of job he does in the home as a father.
—Walter MacPeek
A dad is a mender of toys, a leader of boys.
He’s a changer of fuses, a healer of bruises.
He’s a mover of couches, a healer of ouches.
He’s a hanger of screens, a counselor of teens.
He’s a pounder of nails, a teller of tales.
He’s a dryer of dishes, a fulfiller of wishes.
Bless him, O Lord.
A father is a man who is forced to endure childbirth without an anesthetic.
A father is a man who exchanges the currency in his billfold for snapshots.
A father is a man for whom the Christmas bills toll.
A father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in a child’s eyes. He’s never quite the hero his daughter thinks … never quite the man his son believes him to be … and this worries him sometimes.
A father works too hard to try and smooth the rough places in the road for those who will follow him.
A father is a man who gets very angry when the first school grades aren’t as good as he thinks they should be.
A father is a man who hopes to have enough money on Father’s Day to pay the bills from Mother’s Day.
A father is a man who accuses the merchants of setting aside this annual day in June so they can get rid of their leftover Christmas ties and shaving lotion—but they love it anyway.
Fathers have very stout hearts, so they have to be broken sometimes or no one would know what’s inside.
Fathers fight dragons … almost daily. They hurry away from the breakfast table … off to the arena which is sometimes called an office or a workshop … and they don’t quite win the fight but they never give up.
Fathers make bets with insurance companies about who’ll live the longest.
Fathers are what give daughters away to other men who aren’t nearly good enough … so they can have grandchildren that are smarter than anybody’s.
But most unique, a father is a man who reflects the image of His Father in heaven and who makes it easier for his children to know their father’s heavenly Father.
Four years: My Daddy can do anything!
7 years: My Dad knows a lot … a whole lot.
8 years: My Father does not know quite everything.
12 years: Oh, well, naturally Father does not know that either.
14 years: Oh, Father? He is hopelessly old-fashioned.
21 years: Oh, that man—he is out of date!
25 years: He knows a little bit about it, but not much.
30 years: I must find out what Dad thinks about it.
35 years: Before we decide, we’ll get Dad’s idea first.
50 years: What would Dad have thought about that?
60 years: My Dad knew literally everything!
65 years: I wish I could talk it over with Dad once more.
FATHER’S DAY
Father’s Day comes after Mother’s Day. That’s so the bills for Mother’s Day will arrive just in time for Father’s Day.
A small boy’s definition: “Father’s Day is just like Mother’s Day, only you don’t spend as much on the present.”
FATIGUE
If I had my entire life to live over, I doubt I’d have the strength.
FAULTS
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.
The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
—Thomas Carlyle
If you think you have no faults, that makes one more!
FAVORITISM
A deplorable incident occurred in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. He said in his auto-biography that during his student days he was interested in the Bible. Deeply touched by the reading of the Gospels, he seriously considered becoming a convert. Christianity seemed to offer the real solution to the caste system that was dividing the people of India. One Sunday he went to church to see the minister and ask for instruction on the way of salvation and other Christian doctrines. But when he entered the sanctuary, the ushers refused him a seat and suggested that he go back and worship with his own people. He left and never went back. “If Christians have caste differences also,” he said to himself, “I might as well remain a Hindu.”
FEAR
There is no fear like the fear of being found out.
All religion is borne out of fear.
—Bertrand Russell
A French existentialist said that each century can be summarized by one word.
17th century—mathematics
18th century—natural sciences
19th century—biology
20th century—fear
A wife’s number-one fear is that of being used and abandoned. A husband’s number-one fear is that of failure.
One summer during another hurricane season, Frank Graham, then president of the University of North Carolina, was taking a vacation in his cottage on the Atlantic beach. Storm warnings were up, causing a rather sleepless night. When he went into the kitchen to fix a sandwich, he found the family cook trembling with fear.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “The waves are only three feet high.”
“It’s not those three-foot waves that bother me,” she replied. “It’s those three thousand miles of water leaning up against those three-foot waves!”
When I’m Afraid
When I’m afraid of times before,
What coming days will bring,
When life’s omissions I deplore,
And earth-mists ’round me cling,
Oh, Lord of Love, my weakness see;
When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in Thee.
When I’m afraid of dangers near,
Foreboding future ills;
When rocks and shoals and deeps I fear,
And gloom my spirit fills;
Oh, Lord of Might, my weakness see;
When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in Thee.
When I’m afraid of crushing loss,
Parting from loved ones dear,
Lest I shall murmur at my cross,
And yield to faithless fear;
Oh, Lord of Peace, my weakness see;
When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in Thee.
When I’m afraid of failing health,
Sore weaknesses I know,
And illness steals o’er me by stealth,
And sickness lays me low;
Oh, Lord of Power, my weakness see,
When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in Thee.
When I’m afraid of drear old age,
As nature’s powers decay,
Mortality’s dread heritage
Increasing day by day;
Oh, Lord of Grave, my weakness see,
When I’m afraid, I’ll trust in Thee.
Amy Carmichael was a great missionary who lived for fifty years in India without ever returning to England. She lived in a sickroom for many of those years because of an accident suffered early in her missionary career. She had two plaques on the wall of her room. One said, “Fear not.” The other said, “I know.”
A child had to walk each evening past a dark, spooky house. Some adults sought to give him courage. One handed him a good luck charm to ward off the ghosts. Another had a light put on the dreaded corner. Still another said earnestly, “Trust God and be brave!” The advice was good, but he offered nothing more. Then someone said with compassion, “I know what it is to be afraid. I will walk with you past the house.” He did nothing to remove the fear—except to lift it from the child’s shoulders and place it on his own.
When you’re afraid, keep your mind on what you have to do. And if you have been thoroughly prepared, you will not be afraid.
—Dale Carnegie
Everyone is living or working in fear. The mother is afraid for her children, the father for his business, the clerk for his job. The worker is afraid of his boss or a competitor. There is hardly a man who is not afraid that some other man will do him a bad turn.
—Basil King
Fear is the most devastating emotion on earth. I fought it and conquered it by helping people who were worse off than I was. I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Dr. Harold Urey, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the physicians whose work led to the creation of the atomic bomb, wrote, “I write to make you afraid. I, myself, am a man who is afraid. All the wise men I know are afraid.”
George W. Truett, one of the great preachers during the first half of the twentieth century, said that his experience with people led him to preach on the theme of fear again and again. On one occasion, he was asked to speak at a highly respected college. When Truett inquired about what topic to address, he was told that the vast majority of the student body had signed a statement that read, “Let the visiting minister tell us how we may conquer fear.”
—Our Daily Bread
What are Americans afraid of? National research by R. H. Bruskin Associates shows the following hierarchy of fears: Speaking before a group heads the list, feared by 40.6 percent of those interviewed. This fear is greater among women than men, and greatest in the Southern United States. Fear of high places comes next at 32 percent; followed by insects and bugs (three times as many women as men); followed by financial problems, deep water, sickness, flying, and loneliness.
In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared.
—Jerome S. Bruner
A young woman was waiting for a bus in a crime-ridden area one evening when a rookie policeman approached her. “Want me to wait with you?” he asked. “That’s not necessary. I’m not afraid,” she replied. “Well, I am,” he grinned. “Would you mind waiting with me?”
A backwoods farmer, sitting on the steps of a tumble-down shack, was approached by a stranger who stopped for a drink of water.
“How’s your wheat coming along?” asked the stranger.
“Didn’t plant none.”
“Really, I thought this was good wheat country.”
“Afraid it would rain.”
“Well, how is your corn crop?”
“Ain’t got none. Afraid of corn blight.”
The stranger, confused but persevering, continued, “Well, sir, how are your potatoes?”
“Didn’t plant no potatoes either … afraid of potato bugs.”
“For Pete’s sake, man,” the stranger asked. “What did you plant?”
“Nothing,” said the farmer. “I just played it safe.”
Fear kept him from taking risks, and as a result, he lost out.
—A. L. “Kirk” Kirkpatrick