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Father, we want to honor You; the Father of us all on this great day.

We, the women of our Community, want to thank You for giving us such great men over our children.  We know how important Your role is in our lives as our Father in heaven and we want the men of this Community to know we appreciate the role they play in our children’s lives.

We pray blessings over each man that lives here, weather he is a Father or not.  He may be a Father someday, so we pray blessings on all men in this Community.  We ask that You give each one of them wisdom, so much wisdom that it would exceed Solomon’s wisdom.  Give each one of them love, so much love that they will not have room in their heart for any hate or angry.

We thank You for these men and the example they set; to not only our children, but to us.  Help us to build these Fathers up with encouragement and blessings everyday.

Thank you, Father for being the best role model of all, and help these men to look to You for everything.  Amen.

One year in my church many years ago, the women decided to take up the offering on Father’s Day to honor the men in our church.  For some odd reason, all the Ushers at that time were men.  The church gave the women some flack about wanting to do this.  Not because we were women but because of the sensitive nature of handling money.  It was a small gesture, but the women wanted to do something.

Anyway, the above prayer is the prayer I prayed that morning in front of our congregation.  It’s a simple prayer, nothing elaborate but you should have felt the Spirit of God that morning.

You see, symbolism seems to be lost on men, but not on God.  Yes, we could have given our men a hat or something at the door, which I’m sure we did but the gesture of us doing this small act was not in vain.  Just accomplishing this was quite a feat.

I went to the Pastor to get permission.  He told me to go to the Head Usher.  The Head Usher said he would have to speak to the Pastor.  I had already submitted a detailed outlay with drawing of how everything would work, but that wasn’t sufficient.

The Head Usher ask for about five more things.  The dance continued for about two months before we got permission.  Good thing I started in March.  In March, they ask me to ask again in May, which I did.  I think they thought I would give up on such a trivial task, but I knew God wanted me to pursue, so pursue I did.

I think God gives us menial task to find out what we are made of.  To see if we will carry thru with what we set out to do.  But I digress, this is about Fathers.

Like the prayer said, “Fathers are our greatest gift, if we set them up in our lives as we should”.

We are their help mate and they are ours.  We are not supposed to walk all over them, and they should not walk all over us.  We need balance in our relationship and our parenting.  If we have a good relationship with our spouse, then our children will probably have a good relationship as well.  (Notice I said probably!)  Nothing is definite.

If we want a good relationship with our Spouse, then we need a good relationship with our Father in heaven.  Start working on your relationship with God and see what a great earthly Father your spouse will become.

Karen Y. Stevens is Executive Director at Meals on Wheels