Honor and respect your parents
Something magical happens when a bundle of girlish charm meets her great-grandmother for the first time. Beats is 5. She speaks in complete paragraphs. Ruthie is now 93. She’d never seen Beats before. She was so surprised!
I treasure the photo of this with four generations of family. My wife drove to Mississippi for Mother’s Day. I stayed behind to work. Lana had a wonderful time visiting her mom, along with Rebekah and Beats. Her mom, Ruthie Stone, is a widow. She was married to an Assembly of God pastor, a pioneer church planter. Mom Stone was a preacher herself. She’s frail but possesses a sharp mind. Fascinating conversations, deep wisdom and lots of love were on display. One generation testified to the next about God’s faithfulness.
The older I am, the more important family becomes. Family is multi-generational. It leaves a legacy. It creates a culture. It impacts a nation. In this day of splintered homes, absentee fathers and scattered children, parenting is not so easy. But another issue is how do we relate to our older parents? I’m not talking about roles they played as father and mother when we were young. What about our parents now that we are adults and they are seniors?
Do we abandon Mom and Dad? Do we make phone calls, mail cards but never stay involved? Or do we stay dependent on them like the 30-year-old man who was sued to leave home?
There is a commandment from God embedded in our DNA. It has spiritual, judicial and legal power. It has consequences that are serious, both good and bad. It is extra-territorial, without boundaries. It affects future generations. It applies to us whether we believe it or not, whether we acknowledge God or not, whether we are Democrat or Republican, male or female, whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist — or a plain vanilla, ignorant secular humanist. Like gravity, you can’t escape it.
The law of the Lord regarding how we relate to our parents appears in the Bible in the Ten Commandments. It was given to the Hebrews in the Old Testament (Exodus 20). It was repeated in the New Testament as a principle for Christians. It applies universally for the benefit of humanity and all families. In the New Testament, Paul explained this requirement.
“Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth,” Ephesians 6:1-3 (NASB). Dishonor destroys, but honor blesses.
Notice the different requirements. Children, obey. To obey means to do what you are told. Learn to follow instructions. Learn to be responsible. This kind of training must be done by parents. If they fail, everything else in life gets tougher. This is done “in the Lord.” It is a God-thing. As we become adults, we shift from obeying to honoring. Honor is an attitude with corresponding actions. It has financial connotations (i.e., honorarium). It means to show respect, to value someone or esteem them.
But as far as the Lord is concerned, we should live all year long aware of our parents, watching out for their welfare and respectful of the sacrifice they made to raise us. We are indebted to them. Why do this? Because it is right. It makes multi-generational wealth. It has a promise that the Lord will see us and bless us with long lives in the land. Honor brings its own reward.