Fathering

In a story that moved even seasoned doctors to tears, a young girl named Pari inspired what her neurologist calls a “sort of miracle” after her father suffered a devastating stroke. Shared by Dr. Sudhir Kumar of Apollo Hospitals in India, the story has touched hearts around the world.

When her father was hospitalized, paralyzed and unable to speak, Pari arrived with a cracked, faded pink piggy bank—her most treasured possession—and offered its contents to the doctors. “I have saved a lot of coins in this,” she said, her voice steady despite her tears. “You can use all of them to make Papa speak again.”

Moved by her love, the medical team enrolled her father in an intensive rehabilitation program that included Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), which uses music and melody to help restore language. Slowly, with the help of Kishore Kumar’s classic Hindi songs—favorites he once sang with his daughter—faint hums gave way to broken words.

Each day, Pari visited the hospital, sitting by his side, reminding him of their cherished game of antakshari, a common Indian parlor game where people sing with and to one another. One song in particular became their bridge through the silence: “Rona kabhi nahi rona, chahe toot jaye khilona” (“Never cry, even if your toy breaks”). Though he couldn’t yet converse, his hums were filled with affection and hope.

Then, three months later, the miracle arrived. Pari walked into the outpatient department—this time with her father beside her. He stood tall, smiling. And then, with clear words and joy in his voice, he said, “Pari, let’s play antakshari.”

It was a moment no one in the room would forget. A father reclaimed from silence. A daughter’s love, translated into healing. For these two, in this moment, their love was the most effective treatment.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God can use the smallest acts of love and faith to bring about mighty healing and restoration.

In an article in The Atlantic, Russel Shaw writes:

When my son was a toddler, I realized how much my emotional reactions influenced his. If I showed worry when he fell, he'd wail; if I remained calm, he'd recover. Learning that I could so powerfully influence his mental state was a revelation. This taught me that parenting is about more than just teaching skills; it's about shaping emotions.

Our instinct is to protect our children, but overprotecting can hinder their development. This urge has led to pop-culture mythology around pushy parenting styles, including the “Helicopter Parent,” who flies in to rescue a child in crisis, and the “Snowplow Parent,” who flattens any obstacle in their child’s way.

Lighthouse parents, on the other hand, provide support while allowing their children to learn from their experiences. Like a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.

The crucial shift is from fixing problems to listening. Listening teaches resilience and communicates trust in our children's abilities. Parenting can be stressful, but by letting them face challenges, we help them build the skills they need to thrive.

Living in Hollywood is a challenge. Growing up as a child actor almost guarantees a life of dysfunction. Without a strong father, Ron Howard could have taken the path of least resistance. But his father was there from the beginning, protecting, loving, guiding.

There was a time when Dennis the Menace was a hit as a troublemaking, mop-headed boy. “Leave It to Beaver” featured boys who rubbed adults the wrong way. The wisecracking, annoying trope was all the rage. It’s also how the character of Opie was originally written.

After the first reading, Rance Howard, Ron’s father, sat down with Andy Griffith and gently encouraged him to make Opie’s relationship with his TV dad a little more tender and innocent, a little more real, like his relationship with his own boys. Andy listened and took the suggestion to heart. When shooting started, Opie emerged as a new kind of television boy, a kid who had a special relationship with his father, who helped his son through life’s challenges.

Seeing a boy own up to his mistakes and a father own up to his — traits influenced by Rance and Ron — created an honest relationship that families still look to today. Ron Howard says of his father, “He stood for something that people could recognize as integrity. And we benefited from that.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Looking up to your father is a powerful force. We need wise fathers as role models in life. Fathers who love us and help us learn from our mishaps.

Michael Hoffen is a new author, and like him, the central character of his book is a teenager. But there’s quite an age gap between them—about 4,000 years. That’s because Hoffen translated an ancient papyrus from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and brought to life the true story of a young Egyptian from ancient times named Pepi. In the papyrus, Pepi’s father, Khety, is intent on getting his son a job in the royal court.

Young Pepi wonders what career path he should choose, an important matter still contemplated today by millions of teenagers forty centuries later. His father Khety takes him on a long journey up the Nile to enroll him in a school far away from home. Along the way, Khety explains 18 other terrible jobs Pepi could end up having to work at if he is not hired as a scribe.

Hoffen, who has been translating ancient texts since middle school, became fascinated by a 4,000-year-old or so piece of literature from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as The Instruction of Khety.

Under the guidance and collaboration of his two co-authors, Egyptologists Christian Casey and Jen Thum, Hoffen spent three-and-a-half years translating hieroglyphics into modern-day prose and gathering images to tell the story of Kheti and Pepi.

He then published a book called “Be A Scribe! Working for a Better Life in Ancient Egypt.” In the book he describes just how little the human condition has changed in thousands of years and shows readers that working for a living has never been easy!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Parents still want the best for their children, and teenagers face important decisions as they set out on their career paths. This story shows how little parenting has changed across thousands of years. The record of an Egyptian father giving life advice to his son mirrors the same instructions that Solomon gave to his sons in Proverbs, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. For I give you sound teaching…” (Prov. 4:1)

In his Hall of Fame speech, Brett Favre told a story that he had never shared publicly:

One more thing about my father, and this is something I've never told anyone. My dad was my high school football coach. He was the head football coach, and he coached me and my two brothers. But I never had a car growing up and I always rode to and from school with my father in his truck. So, he was always the last to leave the building because he had to turn the lights off, lock up, and then we made our way home.

So, it was the last high school football game of my high school career. Although I don't remember how I played in the last game, what I do remember is sitting outside the coach's office, waiting for my father to come out so we could leave. It was dark. And I overheard my father talking to the three other coaches. I heard him -- and I assume I didn't play as well the previous week only because of what he said. He said: ‘I can assure you one thing about my son; he will play better. He will redeem himself. I know my son. He has it in him.’

And I never let him know that I heard that. I never said that to anyone else. But I thought to myself: That's a pretty good compliment, you know? My chest kind of swelled up. But I never forgot that statement and that comment that he made to those other coaches. And I want you to know, Dad, I spent the rest of my career trying to redeem myself.

I'm working on it. I'm trying to get through it. But I spent the rest of my career trying to redeem myself and make him proud, and I hope I succeeded.

Possible Preaching Angle:

For better or for worse, our words are self-fulfilling prophecies. Are you giving people, especially your children, something to live up to or something to live down to? Are your words life-giving? Or do they suck the life out of others? Are your words encouraging or discouraging?

In a fascinating article, writer Tim Grierson walks us through the history of the TV dad and shows how each dad reflects the values in America at that time. Below you will see the summary of each era of TV dad.

• Mid 1950s - Jim Anderson (Father Knows Best): Father Knows Best preached a wholesome, slightly square domestic normalcy that placed the dad at the top. His job is to go to work and make a living, enduring his little tots when he comes home at night. Everything's perfect, and nobody has any major problems.
• The 1960s - Steve Douglas (My Three Sons): Steve Douglas was the friendly, noble single dad to three growing boys. What was mildly edgy about the show was that his character was a widower, allowing Americans to see a nontraditional family dynamic on TV. My Three Sons at least started to reveal the cracks in the idealized American portrait of father-mother-and-cute-kids.
• 1970s - Archie Bunker (All in the Family): This was a father who definitely didn't know best—more accurately, he represented an outdated worldview that was quickly being shoved aside by a new (and, for him, frightening) order.
• Late 1980s - Dan Conner (Roseanne): Dan was a new kind of father: vulnerable and sweet, henpecked by his bossy wife but still hopelessly devoted to her. Dan was a man constantly ashamed of his inability to give his family a better life, but always trying to compensate by being as good a guy as possible.
• 1990s - Homer Simpson (The Simpsons): In Homer, The Simpsons found what is, to this day, the perfect modern-day TV father: drunken, well-intentioned, utterly worthless, prone to anger, always at a loss for the right thing to do or say.
• 2000s - Tony Soprano (The Sopranos): Tony Soprano is the prototypical breadwinner and head of the household; except he's so hobbled by inner turmoil and “business” concerns that he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
• 2010s - Bob Belcher (Bob's Burgers): In Bob we see the overextended modern dad in all his rumpled glory, just trying to keep his head above water in all aspects of his life.

A father’s influence on their sons is profound. As young men, we look first to our fathers to help lay the foundation for our own future growth. They help us distinguish between right and wrong. They encourage our strengths and nurture our struggles to prepare us for the future.

But fathers aren’t perfect. Sometimes opportunities to teach life lessons or impart simple skills get lost in the chaos of life. And it’s easy to look back with longing and regret at those moments.

The point is to not dwell on mistakes. Rather, it is to learn about what you might want to prioritize as a father. So, what do their kids wish their dads taught them when they were still young. Here are five things they said:

1. How To Be Present

“I wish I had learned from my father the importance of experiencing life, moments, and relationships over working for the dollar. Make your living but be present. Cherish family because time is the one thing you can't get back.”

2. How To Know My Worth

“My father never taught me to be confident in myself. He was abusive and manipulative and I would doubt whether any actions or decisions were the right ones. One thing stands out in my mind is that I must cherish my own children and never make them feel inferior.”

3. How To Fix Things

“My dad was one of those guys who was very mechanically inclined. If I could go back in time to being a kid again, I would have asked my dad to take time to bring me in on some of his repair jobs. It would have given me much needed confidence when working with my hands, which happens a lot as a dad.”

4. How To Care

“My dad wasn't very present during my childhood. He was a traveling businessman and was gone 2-3 weeks of every month. The biggest thing he never showed me was how to care for the people I love.”

5. How To Problem Solve

“My dad was very much a ‘Let me do it’ kind of guy. He wanted to fix the problem rather than help us learn about it. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I think it hindered my ability to think for myself while I was growing up.”

Over the last 20 years, research has consistently shown that fathers have a unique way of engaging with small children. Horsing around is more common with fathers than it is with mothers, especially as infants grow into toddlers and preschoolers. Studies show vigorous bouncing, lifting, tossing, and chasing take over from more gentle play, and this roughhousing leads to better self-control and school readiness as children turn five. The father’s rough-and-tumble play is also connected to better gross-motor skills in the child, regardless of the father’s income or education level.

A vast study, published in the journal Pediatric Research in the summer of 2023 adds weight to the idea that a father’s hands-on involvement underpins a child’s later ability to self-regulate and problem-solve. A research team from Japan sampled 28,040 children. At intervals of six months, from one month of age to their third birthday, each child’s mother was asked to rate the father’s participation in early child-rearing, including feeding, changing diapers, bathing, dressing, playing at home or outdoors, and putting the child to sleep. Japanese fathers are typically less involved in child-rearing than North American fathers. But when the researchers examined the children’s milestones at age three, they discovered that children whose fathers invested more time in their care showed better gross and fine motor skills, problem solving, and social skills than children whose fathers were not as involved.

There was no difference between the language skills of kids with involved versus aloof fathers. The lead researcher concluded that “the risk of developmental delay in children with highly involved fathers was 24% lower.”

According Deadspin’s sports columnist, Stephen Knox, NBA legend LeBron James may have achieved athletic feats that ordinary men can only dream of, but in one important way he’s just like many other men his age: he’s still an overprotective dad.

LeBron is the father of LeBron “Bronny” James, Jr. A point guard for the University of Southern California Trojans, Bronny has been widely considered a highly touted college basketball prospect for most of his collegiate athletic career. But it’s been unclear how much his visibility is due to hard work, talent due to genetic advantages, or simple nepotism.

This is why James caught some heat online after he responded defensively to the news that the prognosticators of the 2024 ESPN Mock NBA Draft left Bronny off their list, implying that he might need one more year of college basketball before his skill level will make him NBA-ready.

“Can y’all just let a kid be a kid and enjoy college basketball,” LeBron wrote on a recent social media post. “The work and results will ultimately do the talking no matter what he decides to do.”

Critics and skeptics piled on by rightly pointing out that LeBron helped to create the hype that he is now decrying by publicly stating a desire to play with his son in the NBA. Nevertheless, it seems as though Knox is willing to give LeBron the benefit of the doubt regarding his motivations. Knox concluded, “Even an American sports icon can get carried away with parental pride.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our Heavenly Father loves us fully and unconditionally; no matter the pressure others put on us or we put on ourselves, God requires us only to faithfully live our calling and trust the outcome into his care.

Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Steve Young has found a new way to be around the sport that made him a star--coaching his daughters in flag football. Flag football will make its debut at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. It is growing immensely because it combines the strategy and athleticism of American football and makes it less violent. Instead of being tackled, ball carriers are stopped when one of the small Velcro-enabled flags at their waist is removed.

Young said, “I was blown away at their sense of, ‘Oh my gosh, I no longer love football because I get to watch it. I now love football because I get to play it.’ And the difference in the emotion that they had, it just shocked me.” He later said, “It was just so much fun for me to relate to these fresh new feelings.”

Young coaches his daughters Summer and Laila on their high school flag football team, the Menlo Knights. After losing their first game after Young was recruited by former NFL player John Paye, the Knights went on a 15-game winning streak. By the end of the season, the Menlo Knights were playing on the main field in front of a big crowd with announcers.

Young has two sons and two daughters and says:

My boys have taught me more about life and didn’t play football, but I can’t tell you what they meant to me to be their dad. But my previous life wasn’t a part of our home very much until this last couple of months. My family life is sublime. I would want nothing more, honestly. But the fact that it does connect with my previous life in kind of a way that brings it home to me and then it’s my girls, it hits in a soft spot.

Possible Preaching Angle:

One of life's greatest joys is modeling a life of faithfulness and commitment to your children and guiding them as they attempt to follow your example.

In her 2023 book, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, author Mary Eberstadt explores the aftereffects of the sexual revolution on men, women, and children. Today there is considerably less family commitment and nurturing relationships than in the past. She writes:

Children today are considerably less likely to have siblings — and by extension, cousins, aunts, and uncles — than they were sixty years ago. Almost 30 percent of all households consist of just one person. Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home. Such momentous, ubiquitous changes to kinship have had and continue to have momentous and ubiquitous consequences. How could they not? A world of fewer and weaker family ties is one in which deprived people are furious about things they do not have or no longer know.

The National Review summarizes her main points:

To put it more starkly, in the name of human freedom, we have perhaps unwittingly created a society in which children on the whole experience less love and commitment in their lives than ever before. There are literally fewer people in their lives who are bonded to them by familial ties. This means fewer role models. Fewer chances to connect with the one odd cousin, aunt, or in-law who shares a peculiar passion or trait. It means less practice at socialization. It means fewer chances to practice sharing joy, and grief, with people whose bonds are natural and durable.

Eberstadt discloses the undeniably shocking consequences:

The vast majority of incarcerated juveniles have grown up in fatherless homes. ... Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other tragic outcomes.

A recent survey of more than 1,600 teenagers by Harvard found that almost twice as many 14-to-18-year-old boys and girls feel comfortable opening up to their mothers (72%) as to their fathers (39%) about anxiety, depression, or other mental-health challenges. The gap suggests that fathers can become much more involved at home, offering the kind of emotional support that many children today so urgently need.

Intimacy between a parent and a child acts as a protective buffer against the day-to-day challenges of life. In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology researchers found that closeness with fathers was associated with fewer weight concerns, higher self-esteem, and fewer depression symptoms for both boys and girls.

A paper published in January of 2023 highlighted the role that dads play in building a child’s skills in regulating emotions. Fathers who were involved in caregiving and play, and who reacted with warmth and greater sensitivity to a child who expressed emotions, were significantly more likely to have children with better emotional balance from infancy to adolescence. Those skills in children are linked, in turn, with higher levels of social competence, academic achievement, and resilience. Conversely, poor emotional regulation skills are linked with anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems.

Boys can be especially affected by whether fathers are part of the emotional equation. Our culture often tells men that softer emotions are weak, so fathers may have to give sons explicit “permission to feel.” Because many men didn’t grow up with an emotionally warm male role model, they may lack confidence in their own abilities to be sensitive caregivers, which can hold them back.

The bottom line is that a strong fatherly connection helps young people to manage their emotions and deal with mental-health crises.

The writer and actor Daniel Beaty recalled a childhood game he played until he was three. When Beaty’s father knocked at his bedroom door in the morning, Beaty would pretend to be asleep, before jumping gleefully up into his father’s arms. Until the morning his father did not knock, because he was in prison. Three decades later, Beaty performed his poem “Knock, Knock,” which includes the following lines:

25 years later I write these words for the little boy

in me who still await his papa‘s knock …

Papa, come home cause I miss you

I miss you waking me up in the morning and telling me you love me.

Papa, come home, because there are things that I

Don’t know and I thought maybe you could teach me:

How to shave, how to dribble a ball, how to talk to a lady, how to walk like a man …

This was one father-daughter activity Dr. Harold Roberts Jr. and Dr. Sophia Roberts will never forget: The day they teamed up to perform heart surgery. Sophia is a general surgery resident physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. That's also where her dad Harold serves as an associate professor of cardiac surgery.

Sophia Roberts' interest in medicine started at an early age. Harold Roberts said he took her to her first operation when she was around 11-years-old. Harold said, “Instead of reading storybooks to her at times, I was showing her anatomy books and stuff like that. She showed a real interest in (medicine).”

Sophia was recently able to fill in for another physician and assist her dad during an aortic valve replacement surgery. On the day of the operation, Sophia started off by helping open the patient's chest, and the rest of the surgery went very smoothly. Doctor dad said, “I couldn't have done the case any better if I had another heart surgeon assisting me. What can be better? I taught this kid how to ride a bicycle a few decades ago. Now, to get to teach her how to operate on a human heart is pretty mind-blowing.”

Author Pete Greig shares the following story in How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People:

I was walking the darkened streets near our house one night, reviewing the day before bed, remembering how I'd driven Sammy [my wife] and the boys to the cinema and how someone had cut us off. I'd yelled at him. Sammy had yelled at me. I'd yelled at Sammy. Hadn’t she seen how dangerously the other guy was driving? Had she forgotten that we had vulnerable children in the car? Didn't she know there was such a thing as righteous anger? She'd gone silent.

We arrived at the cinema. The film had been great. Life had moved on. No big deal. But now in the stillness of these darkened streets, as I returned to that moment, it seemed that God was siding with my wife. I sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. I admit it: I lost my temper. I shouldn't have yelled at that driver. Lord, help me to be more patient tomorrow."

There was a pause before I sensed him telling me to apologize to our sons. This thought annoyed me, and I found myself protesting. "That's ridiculous. You're making this bigger than it is. My kids don't need me to apologize. They won't even remember such a trivial incident. Do you have any idea what the traffic is like around here?"

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on Hudson's bed. "Son, I just want to say sorry to you for something. Do you remember me yelling at that man on the way to the cinema?" Immediately, he nodded. "I shouldn't have done that. Mum was right. Christians are supposed to be patient and kind. I set you a bad example. That's not how I want you to grow up and treat people. I'm sorry." Right away, he put his arms around my neck and squeezed me tight. "That's okay, Dad.”

A minute later, I was in the room next door, making the same speech to Danny, and the same thing happened. He immediately knew exactly what I was talking about. He hadn't forgotten either. He listened to my apology and didn't think it was crazy. He hugged me and told me it was okay. It's a silly, mundane story, and that's the whole point. We are changed--conformed into the likeness of Christ--through a thousand small choices like these.

When children have questions about their heavenly Father, their first instinct is to ask their mothers. Christian women tend to be more devout than men, and they’re often tasked with the bulk of parenting duties. But findings from Barna Research detail the gap between moms and dads when it comes to many aspects of faith formation:

Practicing Christians were asked, “Whose faith influenced you?”

Mother – 68%

Father – 46%

Practicing Christian teens were asked, “Which parent offers spiritual guidance?”

Prayer together: Mother 63%, Father 53%

Discussing God: Mother 70%, Father 56%

Discussing the Bible: Mother 71%, Father 50%

Responding to faith questions: Mother 72%, Father 56%

Encouraging church attendance: Mother 79%, Father 64%

A team of researchers studied a bird species called the Caspian tern. Using GPS, the team followed their annual migration from the Baltic Sea to the African tropics. One researcher explained the purpose of the project: "We wanted to get a better idea of how the migratory skills of birds are passed from one generation to another in a species where individuals normally migrate together."

It has long been known that birds migrate communally, as witnessed by the annual migrations of large flocks of geese during the North American spring and fall seasons. However, little is known about interactions among the members of traveling flocks.

Having studied the Caspian tern's migration behavior, the research team found that father terns teach their young about the secrets of migration while defending them from dangers they encounter along the way. One researcher said. "This is very fascinating behavior, which we really did not expect to find when setting up our study."

The scientists even observed a case of a foster father bird filling in for a father's role. Young birds always stayed close to the adult bird. Indeed, young strays died. The authors of the study suggest that young birds must remain in contact with a parent during a first foray to winter grounds.

The team also found that when the young birds make their first solo return flight to breeding grounds in Europe, they took the same migratory routes on which they were accompanied by their fathers. In Caspian terns, migration knowledge is inherited through culture from one generation to another. This has consequences on the decisions individuals make years after they first migrated with their father.

Author and YouTube video producer Kim Tate shares her story of finding an intimate relationship with her Abba Father in heaven.

It’s one of my most vivid memories as a girl: sitting on the edge of my bed, face angled toward the window, eyes peeled for my daddy. My heart would race as a new set of headlights approached—maybe that’s him—before sinking as the car passed into the distance. Still, I’d hold on to hope. From the time my parents divorced—I was four—I looked forward to these planned outings with my dad.

Where is he? Did he forget about me? Daddy was always out and about. All I could do was wait, even as daylight turned to dusk and dusk to night. Tears would gather as I realized he wasn’t coming. Again. More than once I thought, I must not really matter. He must not really love me. I was longing for a relationship with my father.

Kim lost her virginity before she turned 16. This brought feelings of shame, because her mother had always preached abstinence until marriage. After that summer, she decided to abstain, but without God she was a slave to sin. So, during college and law school she gave in to living life on her own terms.

During her second year at law school, she fell in love with a fellow student named Bill. After graduating, they moved to Madison to start their careers. But Kim was miserable, so she had a strange idea, “I could pray and maybe God would miraculously intervene to get us out of Madison.”

As I prayed, I started thinking, If I want God to do something for me, I should probably do something for him. Like go to church. Before long I felt convicted about our “living in sin.” So, Bill and I decided to have a private wedding ceremony on Valentine’s Day.

About one year later, Bill couldn’t wait to tell me he’d visited a new church that morning. The following Sunday, we visited together. By the end of service, I was in tears. For the first time, I heard the true gospel preached, and it rocked me. Finally, I understood why Jesus died on that cross. Finally, I saw myself as God saw me—a sinner in need of redemption. I asked God to forgive me, and I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior. For all my prayers that God would save me from Madison, his plan, all along, had been to save me in Madison.

Looking back now, from a distance of 25 years, I remember how studying the Book of Deuteronomy was a pivotal part of my early Christian walk. One word, in particular, jumped off the page. Deuteronomy 10:20 and 13:4 mention “holding fast”—or clinging, as some translations have it—to God. It meant relationship—close relationship. Yet it was hard to fathom. The God of the universe would let me cling to him?

What an unsurpassable gift for that little girl staring out of the window, waiting for her dad, and wondering if she really mattered. My Abba Father was letting me know that I could enjoy an intimate relationship with him forever.

In his recent book, The Wisdom Pyramid, Brett McCracken shares the following story about his father:

I will always remember my dad's Bible. As a kid, it was a fixture in our house. Thick, black leather-bound, with gold leaf edges; stuffed full of church bulletins, Scripture, memory cards, and who knows what else. The well-worn pages were adorned with underlined verses, variously colored highlighted sections, and scribbled margins. I saw dad with it almost every day—studying during his quiet time, preparing a Sunday, school lesson, or maybe leading our family in a dinnertime devotional. The presence of dad's Bible nearby was a comfort. I think it made the Bible more credible to me that, for my dad, it wasn't just a prop to bring to church on Sundays. It was his beloved source of guidance for everyday life.

My life was full of the Bible: learning Old Testament stories on flannel graph in Sunday school; memorizing the order of the Bible's sixty-six books in Vacation Bible School; doing "sword drills" in Awana; memorizing the "Romans Road"; singing songs that went:

The B-I-B-L-E

Yes that's the book for me!

I stand alone on the Word of God: the B-I-B-L-E!

The Bible was the book that shaped my life more than anything else, which is odd looking back on it: an Oklahoma kid being profoundly shaped by an ancient collection of Jewish literature and two-thousand-year-old Mediterranean letters. But I was, and I am.

And my story isn't unique. The Bible has been a treasured source of truth and life all over the world, across countless generations. It manages to speak to the soccer mom in San Diego as much as the truck driver in Taipei; it guides the life of a skateboarding teenager in 2020 Buenos Aires as much as it did the blacksmith in 1520 Liverpool. Everywhere you go in the world, people who share almost nothing else in common can say in unison: "The B-I-B-L-E Yes, that's the book for me!" This can be said of no other book in the world. No other source of truth is as universally beloved and consistently cross-cultural as the Christian Bible.