The Celebration Of Heroes

From the Pastor’s Heart OP-ED  BY  DR.  ROBERT  KENNEDY

Please join me in a follow-up reflection on The Celebration of Heroines, which spoke to our communities’ great mothers and women. In this reflection, I speak of The Celebration of Heroes, which directs us to fathers and men who have been faithful, especially during this pandemic.

These heroes have not followed the unscrupulous behaviors or lack of courage that borders on the risks that have led to the destruction of many. Instead, they have demonstrated that as birth fathers and caring men, they are protectors of their families and have not been unwilling to wear their masks and take the vaccinations, thus showing how much they are careful.

My focus on the celebration of heroes goes beyond the fathers who have been faithful in the pandemic, however. The world around us today is projecting mostly on men who think that prestige, power, and personal needs, are more important than the care of their families and forgetting that the community about them is always more blessed when heroic men inhabit it.

Yes, I have heard so much of the news lately giving attention to the violence of men. The stories of sexually abusive men, such as the soldiers in war zones, men who rape women, men who seem not to care about their responsibility as fathers, are constantly in the news. As I listen to the news, I wonder whether our women and children can bypass such news to see that some fathers and men can be celebrated as heroes.

Maybe, you might say that I am jealous for my men, and truly I am because I have often wished that our world had more men upon whom our women and children can depend as heroes. Yes, it frustrates me, at times, that too many of our brothers-men are not living up to the calling of God for us to act as men of character, integrity, honesty, decency, trust, and love, as we are to be. At times in history, there seems to be a shortage of the kind of hero men of which I am thinking.

When God called Noah to build the Ark. And the comment on Noah was:“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:8, 9, 11-13 KJV)

In the same way, God called Abraham, and the comment is that: (God looked at) Abraham and said of him, “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him” (Genesis 18:19)

There are multiple other examples in Scripture, and we need only cite the above, but it is clearly demonstrated that there has to be a search for hero men often in history. There is good reason why Josiah Gilbert Holland, the great American novelist and poet, in the mid-19th Century wrote his most famous poem:

God give us men. The time demands

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;

Tall men, sun-browned, who live above the fog

In public duty and in private thinking.

Yes, we are truly at the moment in history when need fathers and men can be celebrated as heroes. And just let me hope if you have read the above, you have been challenged to be a hero man.

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