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A father's love..!

The saddest picture taken at Dhirubhai Ambani's funeral was not that of film stars coming to the crematorium, ashen faced, or the suddenly solemn looking politicians, or even the bleary eyed employees and share holders of Reliance, but the picture of a distraught Mukesh the elder son holding back his tears, as Anil his younger brother, equally broken in grief puts out a hand to comfort him.

In their eyes is a sorrow that expresses a love and a bond for their father that no words can ever express. Dhirubhai Ambani did not just build a billion dollar industrial empire, he did not also become just one of the richest men in the world, but he spent time, invested love and built trust into a relationship between himself and his two boys.

How many of us fathers can say that we have done this for our children? I remember the day before my father passed away. I sat on his hospital bed and rubbed his back where the pain of the dreaded cancer lay. Suddenly he turned to me and said, "Bob, all I wanted was for you and your brother to be fine boys." As we came back from his funeral my mother turned to both of us and said, "Your father's passion was to make men of you both..!"

To do that he had to win our trust. He did.

How many of us have won our children's trust totally?

It was well past midnight. Little four year old Tommy had been asleep for hours. Suddenly he awoke from a bad dream. Not knowing whether he was alone in the large, dark bedroom, he whispered into the darkness: "Daddy are you there?"

From the other side of the room came the comforting voice, "Yes, Tommy, Daddy's here." For a moment Tommy lay silent, still not quite sure his bad dream was imagined . Once more he whispered: "Daddy is your face towards me?" And once more the kind voice of his father assured him, "Yes Tommy, my face is towards you."

With that assurance the little fellow turned over, closed his eyes and drifted back to peaceful slumber.

Yes, my dear father's its not enough just being there, what's important is whether your face is turned to your child. Tuned in to his or hers little fears and problems and worries. Whether you have time to listen to their adventures in school?, their misfortunes in college , the pains of broken relationships or their joys in early parenthood?

Is your face towards your child?

It was a sad funeral I attended years ago as a teenager. The father of five grown up children was being buried, but there was not a tear in the eyes of any one of them. And then as the coffin was lowered into the ground I saw something that I have never ever forgotten.

The eldest boy, a middle aged fellow, took a clump of earth from the ground and standing over the grave of his father threw it onto the coffin with all the strength he could muster. "Wretch," he shouted, "you were never there for any of us!"

Dhirubhai was there for his two sons and there are millions of fathers whose faces are turned towards their children. Are you one of them?

If you are one of those children who is missing the love of your earthly father then there is a Father above whose face is always towards you, waiting, just waiting to father you..!

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