My Dad in his somewhat 1993 days was one of a kind! I remember him riding me on this little “Vespa” scooter from the farm.

I recall him taking care of my break-time visit from my nearby pre-school, by fixing a cup of tea, and slotting a raw sweet potato in hot charcoal stove ash so the entire snack could squash my mid-morning hunger. Ah!

I recall our evening stroll to Masindi Post Office and my thrill looking for our box number, sometimes peeping in the keyhole to see whether it was a letter or a wrapped box!

And then years down the road, he was no more. All was gone. The scourge of HIV/AIDS that hit the continent in the 90’s swept him along too.

And In this part of Africa where I live, you grow up clumsy about talking to older people, let alone talking about older deceased people. So I kind of never got to talk about him, let alone publicly.

Thankfully, my Christian faith has regularly empowered me to look straight at the evil under the sun and not only learn to grieve with hope, but appreciate learn how the economy of grace works.

I am now a father of two girls, It sounds so normal now but I couldn’t believe the nurse’s voice last October when she said it was a girl! “Another? wow!” the feeling was just right!

And yet a huge responsibility stalks me everyday, my hubby and dad roles played out before these girls.

The selflessness am called to as a Dad requires me to always put away my Facebook-drenched phone and get creative with the girls amidst toys (when I could be watching Raheem Sterling’s runs against poor Arsenal)

I admit this often feels like incarnation, abandoning what feels like heaven for play mats, doodles, routine neighborhood walks, forged lullabies.

No easy task, yet, thank God, iam regularly empowered for it.

Then there’s the other necessary (sometimes boring) routine of reading a book they want (and need) for bedtime and how interrupting that is to my selfish evenings.

Yet in the economy of grace, my frail Daddy duties rest in Christ’s accomplishment for my identity, and my strengths boast of him too, not in my mere self sufficiency.

My days under the sun, just like my Dad’s, are uncertain, yet I am daily empowered to be a kind of dad I never ever ever imagined!

So yes, I still can’t exactly ascertain what convictions drove my late Dad’s , but I pray mine are clear.

I pray faith and love and hope remind me, my task is urgent, and fleeting at the same time. I better execute with the grace God provides before all is no more, which is what all our days under the sun really are.

Including this “Father’s day” —come to think about it!