HOW DO YOU HONOR YOUR PARENTS?

Today's promise: God celebrates family

How do you honor your parents?

Listen, my child, to what your father teaches you. Don't neglect your mother's teaching. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and clothe you with honor.

Proverbs 1:8-9 NLT

Sensible children bring joy to their father; foolish children despise their mother.

Proverbs 15:20 NLT

Honor your parents

Once upon a time, there was a young family — a father, mother, and their young son. Living with them was the father's dad. Grandpa was old and shaky and very feeble. He dripped everything, especially when he ate. He slobbered everything and made a terrible mess. It was embarrassing to the family, especially when company came over. So put the old man off to one side, away from the table. They gave him an earthen bowl to eat out of. But he broke that. In fact, he continued to slobber and make a mess. Finally, his daughter-in-law spoke out harshly to him and moved him to a far corner of the room, far from the dinner table. He was given a wooden trough to eat out of. At mealtime he would look wistfully at the family, wishing that he could eat with them. But that was not to be.

One day the daughter-in-law found her son fiddling with some pieces of wood as he tried to put them together. She asked him what he was doing. His answer: "I'm making a trough for you and Daddy that I can give you when I grow up." With these words, judgment was brought to the daughter-in-law, and she shared it with her husband. They brought their dad back to the table. He didn't stop slobbering or shaking, but it didn't matter anymore. They were finally honoring their father.

adapted from 1001 Great Stories and Quotes by R. Kent Hughes, Tyndale House Publishers (1998), p 160

The chances are that you'll never be elected President of the country, write the great American novel, make a million dollars, stop pollution and racial conflict, or save the world. However valid it may be to work at any of these goals, there is another one of higher priority — to be an effective parent.

LANDRUM R. BOLLING

Content is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale Publishing House