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Key Bible Verse: As soon as Joseph arrived, he embraced his father and wept on his shoulder Genesis 46:29). Bonus Reading: 2 Samuel 13:37;; 14:23-24,; 2 Samuel 13:37; 14:23-24, 28-33

When Jeff Schulte was four, his father left his mother for another woman, walking out on six children, ranging from age 14 to three months. Jeff's mother raised the family on her own. Jeff saw his father briefly only twice over the next two decades. Meanwhile, he won an academic scholarship and played football at Yale, graduated, got married, and joined a campus ministry.

But these pursuits couldn't dilute Jeff's sense of needing to reconnect. At age 29, he acted. He drove from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Sheboygan, Wisconsin. At his father's workplace, he sat alone with the father. He didn't confront or chastise him. He looked him in the eye and asked, "Do you love me?"

"Of course I love you," said his father.

"Did you miss me?"

"Of course I missed you."

"I needed to hear that," said Jeff. Then he followed a strong impulse to touch his father's hands. "As soon as I did," he says, "I knew why. I'd dreamed those hands would hold me, tickle me, and toss me around the room. I'd always imagined them wrapping around mine, to show me how to swing a bat, how to catch a ball." [continued 12/13]

—Bob Welch in A Father for All Seasons

My Response: Do I need to reconnect with a parent? How could I begin?

Thought to Apply: How many hopes and fears, ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together to connect the parent with the child!—Samuel Goodrich

Adapted from Father for All Seasons (Harvest, 1998) by permission.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, help me to grasp how it is that You expect me, as a grown-up, to honor my parents.

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