Pastor's Column June 17, 2012

 As we think about gifts for Father’s Day, here are a couple of gifts that dads have received lately.

     A lady came down with cancer. At first she responded with fear and depression. But then she had an experience of God that led her to say, “Today I do not pray for a cure for myself. I pray that God will help someone find a cure for cancer so that the thousands who come after me will profit and benefit from that cure.”

     She herself had only one prayer… that she would live as fully one day at a time as she could. Her last act was to ask her husband for a paper and pencil. He thought she wanted to write her will. Instead, she wrote down simple recipes he could use to feed their children.

      And don’t you know that violinist Philippe Quint’s dad felt that he had received an incredible Father’s Day present! Philippe left his 285-year-old Stradivarius in a taxi on a ride home from the Newark Airport. (This in spite of his dad telling him time and time again not to carry a violin case in New Jersey. “People will think you’re a gangster!”)  Cabbie Mohamed Khalil discovered the $4 million instrument and returned it to Quint. This not only made Philippe’s dad ecstatic that he didn’t have to shell out for another, but made Philippe so happy that he performed a free lunchtime concert for 200 New Jersey cabbies.

      Ties, golf balls, and fly rods aren’t the only gifts that fathers treasure. -DJ