You are familiar with the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s marriage was a saga of bitterness. His wife carped and complained and clung to her grudges until he could not bear the sight of her. When they had been married almost a half a century, sometimes she would implore him to read to her the exquisite, poignant love passages that he had written about her in his diary forty-eight years previously, when they were both madly in love with each other. As he read of the happy days that were now gone forever, they both wept bitterly.
Is there anything sadder than to look back over a lifetime of neglected opportunities–wasted years when love could and should have been nurtured–and regret that you “blew it?” Some of you know what I am talking about.
This is Father’s Day. Dads don’t get the respect that they used to. Remember “Father Knows Best”? For many fathers, those were the good old days. A few years ago, a college professor conducted a careful, two year study that asked children aged four to six: “Which do you like better, TV or Daddy?”
Forty-six percent of the youngsters indicated that they preferred television.
I like the story about the ten-year-old boy who answered the doorbell at his home one day. When he opened it, there stood a strange man on the porch. The man said, “Son, you don’t know me, do you?” The young man said, no, he did not. The man replied, “Well, I am your uncle on your father’s side.” To which the young fellow replied, “Well, I am glad to meet you, but you are certainly on the losing side.”
–sermoncentral.com