daily java

Daily Java:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4 NLT).

It is Father’s Day. It was started in 1910 by Sonora Dodd from Spokane, WA. President Lyndon Johnson set it into practice in 1966. And it is a day we honor fathers.

But what exactly does a father do?

There is a national campaign to denigrate fathers that has gone on for several years now. It started with the feminism of the late 1960’s and 1970’s and continues pretty strongly. The idea of a father as nothing more than a sperm donor has gotten stronger.

On TV and in movies, fathers are portrayed as idiots, people who are barely functional themselves, held together in life only by the strong intellect and ability of their wives.

But what does a father do?

Fathers are different from mothers. A mother loves her children automatically. She bears them and then loves them. It is called maternal love. She cannot help loving her children. God made her that way.

But a father chooses to love his children. Unlike a mother who has her children in pain, the husband is a spectator. He sees the children, accepts them and decides to love them.

Throughout history, it has been his job to care for the children by supporting them and teaching them. The family has always been held together by the fact that the mother cared for the children while the father supported them. It worked great for since the beginning of the world.

A father’s job is to train, while a mother’s job is to nurture. A father doesn’t train through beatings or humiliation or any other negative thing. It is through love, a firm guiding, enabling love that leads them to God and his love.

That is why God compared himself to a father, one who loved his children by choice, and who teaches and cares for them, provides for them, instructs them.

Fathers are the bedrock of a healthy society. Without them, the family is rootless. They are the head of the family, and the authority figure the children grow up under.

They are also their children’s first picture of God.

God calls himself a Father. If a child’s father are good and loving, the children see God as good and loving. If they are abusive or absent or uncaring, children see God as this way, too.

When we as fathers take up that office and position and love our children as God loves us, we not only help our families, we give our children that solid picture of God.

Any fool can be a sperm donor. But it takes a special man to be a father to his children.

I am grateful for the father in my life that showed me love and caring and showed me God.

my father died

My father, John Thomas Cliver, Sr., died today at 1:25PM. I don’t what else to say right now.


Father God, I ask for strength for my mother. Bless her and bless my father’s children and his legacy. I praise you anyway. Amen.

an open letter to my dad, john thomas cliver, sr

Dear Dad:

Happy Father’s Day! I hope you are having a good one.

You were a good father. I wanted to take this time to write you a note telling you about a few of the things I remember that made an impression on me. There are things you taught me that I will carry with me to the grave, values that you gave me, impressions that you made.

I remember you coming in and playing cars when I was little. I was pretty young, but you got down on the floor and played with the cars. It impressed me that one so great would come down to play with a little boy.
To this day, I can still remember that.

You worked hard one day sawing out wooden machine guns for Gerald and me. We paid no real attention to what you were doing, just something like you ordinarily did. Then you presented us with wooden machine guns. We played with them for a long time. I don’t know what happened to them, but they were fun.

We went into a café and had dinner. I may have been 10 or so. On the way out, a man told you we looked like fine boys, I remember that you almost swelled up with pride.

We wanted to mow yards and a guy had us come and mow his yard. You went over and helped him do something in his garden primarily because he helped us in our jobs.

You taught me to drive. I would hold the steering wheel on your 1956 red and white Plymouth station wagon as we drove and then I even drove it some. It had a push button transmission. You taught me to drive a standard shift. I drove your black 1955 Ford pickup. You also gave me the chance to drive your 1958 light blue Buick Special, to me still this day a beautiful car. I took my first girl friend somewhere in that car.

You helped me find my first car, a 1962 Mercury Meteor. It had a dent in the back fender. Then you came to Houston to fix my clutch when it went out when I was looking for a job.

You always came up with some money when I needed it. You were always there when I needed advice, even after I got older.

I remember seeing how sun burned you were, wearing your black t shirts. You were the physically strongest man I knew. I know how hard you worked getting money for us, even working construction on your vacation.
One day Gerald and I rode our bicycles out to meet you after work and you took us home in the Plymouth.

I remember the look on your face when I was drafted. I came in the door after taking money out of pay phones in Texas City. I usually came to get a glass of iced tea or something, really just to connect, and you handed me the letter from the Selective Service telling me to report for duty.

I went into the army and came out of the army both the week you were directing Camp Mohawk.

I remember you marrying us in 1971 at Sun Valley Church of Christ.

I remembering going to HOPES with you one semester in the early 1970’s and we had a chance to sit together in class.

You were always glad to see me when I came home.

And I was always glad to see you.

What you tried to teach me: Honor, responsibility, love for God and my church, love for my family, duty to my country, honesty, integrity.

I didn’t learn some things as well as I should have, but I have always held you in highest esteem. You gave me a picture of God the Father that most didn’t get: one who was self-sacrificing and loving.

We didn’t always see eye to eye and disagreed a lot, but you could not have been a better father.

I have always tried to be the kind of father to my children that you were to me.

And I love you.

Happy Father’s Day.

my dad

My dad is still alive and I hope to see him again soon, but I will never talk to him again. Not really. He has Alzheimer's and is progressing strongly. When I was there last, he had a lot of problem placing me in the family, so I know that after this length of time, he will probably not know me at all.

That means I will never see him again, even though I will stand and visit with his body.

There are things that I would like to ask him, ideas I would like to bounce off him. But I won’t be able to.

And it hurts.

My father is a good man who tried his best to be a good father. He and my mother lived in a traditional marriage. He worked all day as a light company lineman and brought his money home to my mother who spend it on groceries and kids’ clothes and bills.

They loved each other and loved their three kids, went to church where my father became a deacon and then an elder. He was even a part-time minister in the Church of Christ and married Ella and me.

He knew a lot about cars and was a great people person. He was a safety representative for Houston Lighting and Power. This is a job that many times made a lot of friction between the safety man and the linemen. Safety men often tried to find the linemen in unsafe situations and would fine them. But he had a way about him that caused him to know all about everybody. He remembered kids being in the hospital and wives who had surgery, birthdays and such. Men who would ordinarily dislike a safety man loved him.

He is a gregarious man. In fact, even though he many times has no idea of where he is or what he is doing there, he will carry on great conversations with total strangers. He just likes people.

Even though he has not died, I miss him. Alzheimer's is one of the worst thing to ever hit the planet, in my opinion. To take the mind and leave the body healthy. It has taken quite a toll on my mother, losing her love and yet keeping his body.

Sure, he had problems in raising me. He was too heavy handed on the discipline, but I always knew he loved me. And he did the best he could.

He is in many ways the man the Bible talks about when it mentions good fathers.

And I love him.

I also miss him.

fathers and daughters

This evening I took my daughter Abby to a Father/Daughter dinner at her church. It was a very well done evening and was Mexican themed. We ate nachos and played some games. The pastor, Jamie Page, did a good job in putting everything together. It was really good seeing the fathers there with their little girls. If more churches would make that emphasis on father/daughter bonding, better thing would happen. TD Jakes did some good work in that in some of his books.

I love my daughter, but I see so many ways in which I could have done better in giving her more self-esteem. I am not sure she felt loved enough growing up. We were so busy at times in just plain survival, I suppose I let some of that go. If I cold I would do it right. Of course, I can’t go back and change anything, but if I could, two things for certain:

1. I would marry my wife again. There is no better companion that a man could have than her. And

2. I would work harder on my children.

Oh, well, too bad doodad. Will not happen. It, however, probably one of the most thought about things by fathers: that certain sense of failure with their children.