This week Elisabeth shares an inside look into the heart of family life in the Howard home as she poignantly describes reflections on her father.
My father’s Christianity was of the seven-day-a-week sort. He rose early in order to have time alone with God before we came to breakfast. After breakfast there were always family prayers, which began with a hymn (all stanzas), followed by Bible reading, then prayer on our knees, ending in unison with The Lord’s Prayer. After dinner, we were not excused until Daddy had read a portion of Daily Light, a little book of pure scripture selections for morning and evening. Again he prayed.
He helped with schoolwork and took an interest in our teachers. I was thrilled when my sixth-grade public school teacher accepted an invitation to dinner—she had been to China, had actually ridden in a gin rickshaw, and Daddy drew her out with many questions for our benefit, as he did with all guests. He took us to the office of The Sunday School Times (where he was first the associate editor and later the editor) and loved to trot us all around and introduce us to the secretaries, receptionist, and the Linotype operators. We knew about his work. When we left the nest, one became a home missionary and pastor, another an academic professor, and four of us foreign missionaries. Our parents counseled us, prayed for us and let go—remaining, however, keenly interested in our chosen fields.
When the six of us get together, which is seldom, we sing hymns (in parts), we laugh a lot and—probably more than anything else—we talk about our amazing parents. Of course we saw nothing amazing about them at all when we were growing up. But what a heritage they left, and what a responsibility is laid on us who are now grandparents to lift high the cross. God help us to help the fathers, first by prayer, by cheerful and loving encouragement, and then—only if asked—by advice.
**Excerpted from the forward to Father and Son by Philip Howard (Elisabeth’s grandfather), written by Elisabeth Elliot, June 1998