Honor your father and mother.

On paper, it is such a simple commandment.

The word honor, as defined by Webster, means outward respect. So, it follows that honoring your parents means to regard or treat them with outward respect.

But, what if you have parents you feel are unworthy of that kind of respect? Maybe your parents are abusive. Maybe they are emotionally unavailable. Maybe they are the cause of wounds that run too deep to heal.

Honor them anyway.

In his book, Love & Respect, Dr. Emerson Emmerich makes a thought-provoking point regarding wives who have a difficult time respecting unloving husbands:

“She can give her husband unconditional respect in tone and expression while confronting his unloving behavior and without endorsing his unloving reactions.” (pg. 43)

The idea here is that a wife can encourage a husband to be more loving simply by showing him unconditional respect even as she refuses to condone unloving behavior. Put another way, as the old analogy suggests, one can gather more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The same principle applies when it comes to honoring parents. Must you condone unloving behavior and harmful actions to do so? No. But, you mustn’t wait until they are deserving. God makes no such distinction in his commandment. It is not written “Honor your father and mother only if they are worthy.” We are commanded to honor them, regardless.

As my grandfather became increasingly ill with lung cancer, it became apparent that he would no longer be able to live alone and care for himself. My mother and father decided to move him into their home. The relationship between my mother and grandfather had, at times over the years, been somewhat strained. Grandpa was an emotionally guarded person, particularly when it came to expressing feelings of love, and he was also known for having something of a temper. We grandkids barely knew the man through limited involvement in our lives growing up. Perhaps it would have been easier to move Grandpa into a nursing home – after all, my parents had no experience caring for a terminally ill family member. But, easy isn’t always honorable and God was asking them to do the honorable.

So it was that Grandpa came home to be surrounded by family in his last days. And, so it was, that we showered him with love rather than shame. Respect rather than bitterness. Connection rather than distance. As God orchestrated this period of reconciliation, hearts softened and we came to realize the depth of the love this frail, old man had for each of us. And, my grandfather left this world knowing that we loved and honored him enough to make his transition from this world to the next as painless and peaceful as possible.

That is honor, my friends. Casting aside whatever differences you may have with your parents and replacing them with Christ-like love.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your example. Thank you, Father, for the knowledge that you truly do create beauty from ashes.

Be blessed.

Rick