Daddy had an empty chair,
Sitting right next to his bed.
No one knew why it was there
Because Daddy never said.

The old chair had first appeared
After Mother passed away
It was part of Daddy’s life,
Ever since that awful day.

Then Dad had a heart attack
None of us kids had been there.
The strange thing, when they found him,
His head was in that old chair.

At the funeral service,
An old friend stood up to say,
That he had been with Daddy
The night Daddy learned to pray.

He said that Daddy told him,
That the day our mother died,
That when he would try to pray,
He would always get tongue-tied.

He said that he told Daddy
He should face an empty chair,
Then when he would say his prayers,
Think of Jesus sitting there.

Then he could talk to Jesus,
Like he would to a close friend.
Doing that each time he prayed,
Fear of praying would soon end.

So now we know why Daddy
Had that night crawled out of bed.
And we know that when he died,
In whose lap he’d placed his head.

This is a story poem with a moral. It is sad that Dad didn’t pass his wisdom on to his children; they might have profited by it. It is evident that the children hadn’t spent enough time with their dad to learn his personal testimony; they had to find out about the chair from a friend at Dad’s funeral. I missed my Dad’s funeral, I had just left his side in route to Vietnam when he went home to Heaven.This is a good poem to put in your church bulletin on Father’s Day.