In the movie Secondhand Lions, Uncle Hub tells young Walter, “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.” When we were kids, if we were lucky, we thought our dads were as strong and powerful as lions that weren't afraid of nothing and could do no wrong. It doesn't really matter if it was true or not, because that's what we needed to believe as children. Believing our dads could do anything, could help us solve any problem or fix anything that got broken - this not only helped us survive and hold onto our sanity in a very scary world, but it helped us to learn something much more important. Whatever version of fatherhood we were blessed to observe firsthand, whether practically perfect or decidedly less so, those experiences helped us to get a small taste of the relationship that we can enjoy with our Heavenly Father. Many of us had truly wonderful dads. If we asked them for bread, they didn't yell at us and throw rocks at us. They gave us bread. And if we asked them for a fish, they didn't try and shove a snake in our face. Whatever flaws they may have had, hopefully they at least weren't doing that. Jesus, speaking to fathers, said, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:9-11). God is a mighty lion that can roar fierce enough to shake the heavens. He can devour all of our enemies and chase away all of our demons. But God has also given us secondhand lions to remind us of His love for us. I am so grateful for my lion of a dad. He has taught me so much about the fierce and protective and lion-like love that a father has for his children and that our Heavenly Father has for each one of us. It is no coincidence that after God laid out commandments for proper worship, the very next commandment was to honor our fathers and our mothers. If we had no earthly fathers to practice loving and obeying and running to with our skinned knees and our broken bicycles, then we wouldn't know how to turn to our Heavenly Father and show Him the proper love and reverence that we should. I hope we all choose to believe that a father's love for his children never dies, because that is something worth believing.
