The Long Way Up

A father plays a major role in the lives of his children. An understatement? An overstatement? Well, whichever your preference, it's a true statement; one that has been poorly heeded, greatly ignored, or severely missed out. Anyone can biologically sire a child -- we got a lot of that going on these days; but to be a father in every sense of the word is, for sure, such a tall order, which is why many men -- for several varying and valid reasons -- opt out of their responsibilities. One such responsibility inherent to the paternal role is the privilege of representing the Heavenly Father to his children. This wouldn't be much of a stretch if men, to begin with, had an existing relationship with their Father in Heaven growing up, and have spent their season of singleness practicing being God-conscious in whatever form of relationship they had with other people. But sadly, that isn't the case most of the time. So, whatever a man learns during his bachelorhood he usually carrie...

During the last Christmas season, I was able to have a mini-conversation with a friend about the definition of the word 'home' . It wasn't really an in-depth, academic discourse but our efforts at giving meaning to the word left us more semi-confused than fully clarified (a dictionary would certainly have given us some well-established and generally accepted exposition of the word). My friend, who used to live in the Philippines but now lives and works in the United States, said she felt at home in both countries, and would miss one when she's in the other. I chimed in with an opinion that home is really where your heart is and that it's actually the people you love that make up home, regardless of location. Adding to that, I expressed that you can be in any geographical location in the world and still be at home. As the discussion went on and I continued to ponder on my thoughts about the matter, a question arose in my mind: What and/or where is ...