June 17 was Father’s day, but it has been said, “Don’t waste too much time on Father’s day.” Mother’s day takes up a lot of our time, and rightly so. Fathers don’t really count for much, as long as they put food on the table. Dads are not a total loss.

Edgar A. Guest wrote:

“Son, don’t throw a thing away;

You’ll find a use for it someday.”

So in a box he stored up things,

Bent nails, old washers, pipes and rings,

And bolts and nuts and rusty springs.

Despite each blemish and each flaw,

Some use for everything he saw.

With things material, this was law;

And often when he’d work to do,

He searched the junk box through and through

And found old stuff as good as new.

And I have often thought since then,

That Father did the same with men;

He knew he’d need their help again.

It seems to me he understood

That men, as well as iron and wood,

May broken be and still be good.

Despite the vices they’d display

He never threw a man away,

But kept him for another day.

A human junk box, on this earth

And into it we’re tossed at birth,

To wait the day we’ll be of worth,

Though bent and twisted, weak of will,

And full of flaws and lacking skill,

Some service each can render still.”

How do you measure a man? Not, “How did he die, but how did he live?” Not, “What did he gain, but, what did he give?” These are the units to measure the worth of a man, regardless of birth. Not, “What was his station?” but, “Had he a loving heart?” And, “How did he play his God-given part?” Not, “What was his church?” nor “What was his creed? But, “Had he befriended those really in need?” Not, “What did the sketch in the newspaper say?”, but “How many were sorry when he passed away?”

I used to wonder just why father never had much time to play. Used to wonder why he’d rather work each minute of the day.

Father didn’t dress in fashion, sort of hated clothing new; style with him was not a passion; he had other things in view. Boys are blind to much that’s going on about them day by day, and I had no way of knowing, what became of Father’s pay. All I knew was when I needed shoes, I got them on the spot; everything for which I pleaded, somehow, Father always got. I wondered, season after season, why he never took a rest, and that I might be the reason, then, I never even guessed. Your Father will forgive you because he loved you.

Frederick Faber, jurist and poet, who lived in the early part of the last century, wrote, “For right is right, since God is God, and right the day must win; to doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be sin.” Stand for the right. No good thing is a failure and no evil thing will be success.

Tertullian wrote, “Clothe yourself with the silk of piety, with the satin of sanctity, with the purple of modesty, so shall God Himself be your suitor.” Billy Sunday said, “If you live wrong you can’t die right.” Phillips Brooks tells us, “Be such a man, live such a life, that if every man were such as you and every life a life like yours, this earth would be a paradise.”