Fathers Needed

I read this, this morning and liked it a lot. (By John Collings)

Rich

If we live as children in a world lacking real maturity, then we are led by those who are physically stronger or intellectually more articulate. We perceive ourselves as grown because there are no examples of adult obvious to us. We operate as adult even as orphaned children must in order to survive. Yet something within us proclaims a restlessness that there must be more. It is because children should be children. Desiring to be a father and caring for children does not make one a father. Becoming a father is a process of time, an accumulation of experience, and involves the transference of a seed of life into a suitable container to contain that life.

This is the predicament of the organized church. Children who know no real maturity striving to proclaim reality which is past their experience and comprehension. Because they cannot ''know'' by virtue of their ''age'', they must operate not by spontaneous living, but by structure and rules which only gives the appearance of what they wish to be.

There must be fathers within the church. Those who operate by an inner knowing of who they are and are able to comfort the children. Encouraging them to be children. To give understanding to the young men, knowing their rebellion and search for gifts and God's power is a natural part of their becoming. Fathers who have no goal and no vision, except to love those whom they have been given that they also might know the Life. Fathers who produce fathers.