This is a good opportunity to give some observations on fatherhood, both from Scripture and from many years of personal experience.

Some will be serious – others, not so much. So here goes.

Adam had to deliver his own children for many years, at least until some daughters of his were born and grew up enough to help. I wonder if, while Eve was screaming in agony, he said something dumb like, “You know, babe, all this pain and screaming could have been avoided if you hadn’t listened to that snake.”

Sarcastic fathers raise sarcastic children. Just trust me on this.

A father’s job is literally never done. No matter how old they get, you will still be teaching, comforting, advising, and assisting them. If I live to be a hundred, I am convinced that I will still be doing everything possible to make sure that my seventy-one-year-old and sixty-nine-year-old and sixty-eight-year-old all turn out right.

Dana and I just left the table a while ago after sitting around with my son listening to him discuss terminal velocity, drag, and complex mathematical formulas, and now I want to know where this alien came from and what he did with my son who was happy just to squeak by in high school.

If I had to counsel a father of children and tell him everything he needed to know about raising godly children and could only use one sentence to do so, it would probably be “Do the exact opposite of everything Lot did.”

Answers are pretty easy to come by when your kids are little. “Why? Because if you stick that nail in that outlet, it will kill you.” When they get older and start asking questions to way more complex things, especially things about life, you will find yourself more and more praying and answering all at the same time.

My daughter, the girl with, the degree, in grammar, has, a venedetta, against commas, so I, often insert, extra ones, in my writings, and get, her to edit, them, just to make, her fume.

Raising boys and raising girls is very different. And I don’t mean like night and day different; I mean like plain piece of paper and emotional shark riding a grizzly bear while picking flowers on the way to either eat a picnic or eat picnickers different.

Apparently, a lot of dads are seeing their young adult children raise their angry fists at the world these days. I get to see mine raising their hands in worship to the King, and I could not be more pleased.

Happy Father’s Day, Dr. James Dobson. The impact you had on me as a boy is now translating into an impact on my children. If you are ever in or near the thriving Metropolis of Mooresboro, North Carolina, lunch or supper is on me.

Some dads have daughters who look lovingly into their eyes. My youngest, the nurse, looks greedily at my gigantic veins and calls them “juicy,” making me shudder and wonder if my life’s story is going to end in a true crime documentary someday.

My kids are all very good at making money. They are also pretty good at keeping all of it whenever we go out to eat. I blame their mother for enabling them.

My girls usually stare stone-faced at my amazing dad jokes while my son applauds and appreciates them. He is going to make a great dad one day.

Father, your wife and children can either be afraid of you or respect you, but never both. You are big enough to slap people around and scream at them in terms and tones that will cower them, but you will never be big enough to do that and have them truly honor you.

I do not miss the days when my children’s feet smelled so horrible that, when they took their shoes off anywhere in the house, Haz-Mat teams showed up to check things out.

Any goofball loser can produce children. A real dad sticks around to provide for them, love them, protect them, teach them, pray over them, lead them to the Lord, comfort them in their hurts, calm them when they are scared, and correct them when they do wrong. So if you cannot be bothered to do all of this with any children you have sired, please refrain from using the lofty terms “father” or “dad” for yourself, and instead use a more accurate term, maybe something like “Narcissistic irresponsible man-baby.”

Pastor Wagner can be contacted by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.orga