It was a warm summer evening and eight or ten of us middle school kids were just goofing off on someone’s lawn. X’s mother and father pulled up in their car. The mother was driving and the father got out and threw X into the rear seat and started punching him as the car drove away.
We were stunned, and I didn’t respond to the event well. My dad had never touched me in anger all the time I was growing up. I never saw any child treated like that. X was a tough kid, but was well liked by our little gang. He died at a young age of a heart attack, and I will never forget X or what I witnessed on that warm summer evening in Maine. The memory hurts me now more than it ever did.
It is a shame that that father didn’t practice what the Bible teaches about children:
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
None of the gang had a father like that, and I believe we went home with a different respect for our dads.
Think about it.
Gary