“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.”
— Proverbs 31:28
I read once about a photograph found during renovations at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. A stocky, middle-aged man in a baseball uniform, with a handwritten note attached: “You were never too tired to play ball. You left work early to help build the little league field. You always came to watch me play. You were a Hall of Fame dad.” The identity of the writer was unknown. But when the story made the news, the man who had left the photo came forward. His dad was gone. But he needed him to be honored.
That story gets me every time. Because at the end of a man’s life, the resume and the accolades mean far less than they seemed to when he was building them. What matters is whether the people who lived inside his house rise up and call him blessed. President George H.W. Bush was asked near the end of his life what his greatest accomplishment was. He could have named a war, a treaty, a decade of public service. He said: the fact that my children still come home to see me.
Being an honorable parent, one whose children genuinely want to honor them, requires a specific set of choices. It begins with receiving your children as gifts from God, not burdens to manage. It continues with dedicating them to Christ from their earliest days, praying over them and for them before they can walk. It grows through instructing them in the Word, not as a religious duty but as daily, relational, organic conversation about what matters and why. It is sustained through loving discipline and through the willingness to say you are sorry when you get it wrong.
I can tell you, as a father and grandfather, that the investment you make in your children in those early years will return to you in ways you cannot yet calculate. The miles driven to ballgames and recitals, the prayers whispered over sleeping children, the hard conversations and the harder hugs: none of it is wasted. And there will come a day, I promise you, when a grown child looks at you and says something that makes every sacrifice feel small. That is the Hall of Fame that lasts.
Be the parent your children can one day honor. It is the greatest achievement you will ever accomplish.
THE GREATEST HALL OF FAME IS NOT IN ANY CITY. IT IS IN THE HEARTS OF YOUR CHILDREN.
