Honoring our Parents

What is honor and what does it mean to honor our parents? One way I have come to understand it is that honor is a combination in equal parts of love and respect. Honoring our parents means we can not love without respect and we should never respect without loving.

Every week as I visit nursing homes I see the results of a culture that has often forgotten how to honor its mothers and fathers. and has abandoned it’s parents.

Yes they are professionally cared for. Yes they are clean and well fed, but they mostly spend their days alone. Though we may be honoring our own parents, God is also calling on us to hear the cry of the forgotten ones. On January 18th hundreds of thousands reminded our nation about the value of the unborn. Today we need many more among God’s people to also remember those left alone in institutions. God doesn’t forget a single sparrow. If we forget these mothers and fathers we have forgotten the heart of God.

A Great Personal Cost

…You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. .. 1 Corinthians 6:19‭-‬20 ESV

One of our grandsons used to love hiding in a closet and quietly listening to us call his name. The longer we took to locate him the better he liked it! He was lost because in a moment of distraction we forgot about him.

“I was lost bur now I’m found” are the words of John Newtown’s hymn. But we were not lost because of Gods inattention. Instead we intentionally chose hiding over fellowship with Him. But God has chosen at great personal cost to find us. Our redemption meant that by His great love He chose the loss of His Son as the price of our return. Now that is a value and a cost far beyond anything else in earth or Heaven!