Thanks, Dad

My father will be missed in several areas of Christian activity, especially Cranleigh Baptist Church and UCCF and by many people (family, friends, colleagues, adversaries).

My sister Cath and brother Al join me in adding our thanks to him for all he did as our father in three key ways.

Dad the big kid
(when we were small)

* Playing and fun

Dad was always able to invent ways of making the most mundane things fun. At bedtime, Mum’s regular request was, ‘Bob, please don’t excite them too much’, while we all howled with laughter at whatever mad game Dad had thought up. Our back garden always seemed to attract the whole road’s children for games of football. The rockery was used as a sin bin for children who swore and it was never Dad who had to go and get the ball back. Dad even made cattle grids fun by pretending to get stuck. The children in the back would then have to push as hard as possible on the front seats to move the car forward. It was brilliant, but I really don’t know how I ever managed to do physics after this!

* Fantastic holidays

Our family holidays were fantastic. Whether or not the sun shone, we played endless games on beaches (King Canute tide battles, tunnels for cars, swimming, cricket, races, damming streams, skimming stones). Even when we were very small, Dad introduced us to the delights of climbing mountains — the views, the sense of achievement, the bilberries, the dips in freezing mountain streams after a hot day. He must have carried us for miles and it is only now that I have my own children that I appreciate how much effort he put in and how strong he was.

* Sympathy (with humour)

Dad had a never-fail cure for grazed knees. He’d say, ‘I’ll just suck the dirt out’. It usually brought instant recovery as pain was preferable to sucking!

Dad the big help
(when we were bigger)

* Encouragement and help

Both Dad and Mum always encouraged and helped us with the words, ‘JUST DO YOUR BEST’. The important thing was not so much the success, but whether you tried your hardest. We were also encouraged to grow up and make our own decisions. Certainly we were never forced to follow in Dad’s footsteps in choice of sport, school subjects or career.

* Individual attention

I’m not sure how Dad found the time, but we certainly did not lack individual attention. He would go bird watching with Cath at dawn at Beddington sewage works. He would play rugby or football with Al and me every Saturday (usually in the dark). Al and I would play Dad, and the score was strangely always 10-9 or 9-10. Each of us knew he would support us in our sports — rugby, netball, hockey, running, cricket. His was the loudest voice in the crowd, always encouraging, always constructive.

* Seriously competitive

There were tensions as we got older when we came close to beating him (even at table tennis or snooker!) and on one famous occasion a squash game came to an end because Dad refused a ‘let’ and Al smashed his racket.

* Talking and thinking

Car journeys were never silent as there was always something to talk about, from school RE lessons to pop lyrics. He ran a superb open forum for the church Young People’s group, where we were encouraged to raise any issue (and especially those not usually discussed in church), contribute to discussion, suggest relevant Bible passages, and apply them. Dad had a great gift for open questions. He always helped us to relate the issue to the fact of the Fall and then to see it in the light of the cross.

Dad the big example
(when we were grown-up)

Dad didn’t just talk and it was clear to see how he lived out his faith.

* At home

He loved us enough to say ‘No’ when ‘Yes’ would have been the easy or comfortable answer, even though this occasionally led to tensions (especially while courting). He was a great friend to me.

* At work and church

When the circumstances were tough, Dad always stood by his beliefs, even when the cost was extremely high (e.g. losing his job twice). Looking at this now, I sometimes feel bad that we teased him so much about his wallet (e.g. the joke when we filled it with paper moths), as the reality was that there was never much in it, and he demonstrated that happiness does not depend on money.

* Personally

He was still thinking through and developing his faith and belief to the end, still interested to discuss new ideas and to respond to new challenges, still interested in other people’s views and needs even when he knew he did not have long to live.

He trusted God unwaveringly during his illness and was obviously grateful for all the good things God had given him during his life (Mum, children, great friends, happy memories, health). He didn’t complain, was prepared to face death and concerned to prepare us for it. Even in the last couple of weeks, the cheeky wink was still there and his sense of humour was intact: ‘At least I won’t have to die of Alzheimer’s’.

With his grandchildren, Dad resumed the old daft games, helped prepare them for exams, took them up mountains, read to them and talked with them about God. Seriousness went alongside fun and surprises. He developed very close relationships with them, was dearly loved and will be sorely missed.

* Lessons learnt and still learning

Following Dad’s example, we want to set ourselves to love God and to trust his word, knowing that he is in control and that ‘all things work together for good for those who love him and have been called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8.28), even when it doesn’t look like it. We want to love our spouses as much as Dad loved Mum and be as close to each other as they were when the end comes for us. And we want to be as good parents to our children as he was to us. We must look to spend time, enjoy holidays and have fun with our children and in all this to point them to Jesus.

I will always be profoundly grateful for Dad’s great example of fatherhood. Yet when I consider Jesus’s words, ‘If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit to those who ask him’ (Luke 11.13), I realise that, however good Dad was, he is a pale shadow of our truly awesome heavenly Father.

A tribute to Bob Horn from his son Tim