Honor Your Father And Mother

"Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land The LORD your God is giving you."  Exodus 20:12 (NIV)  

The fifth of the ten commandments which The Lord God gave to Moses for His people.  This is the first of the commandments that contains a promise for those who keep it.  Honor your parents and you will be blessed to live a long life.

We are told eight separate times in the Bible to honor our father and mother. (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16, Matthew 15:4, Matthew 19:19, Mark 7:10, Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, and Ephesians 6:2)  To honor our father and mother means more than just saying nice things about them.  To honor them is to respect them, to obey them, to express feelings our for them and to them, to love them, to accept their correction and punishment, to follow their advice and direction, to comfort them in their illness and in their old age, and to provide them with financial and emotional support.  Honoring our parents requires us to demonstrate it with our actions.  They cared for us when we were children, they helped us as adults, and now the time has come, or soon will come, for the roles to be reversed, and we will help and care for them.  Most of them are not happy with their new dependent status.  It is a blessing for us if we are able to spend time with them and make their last few years as easy as possible for them.  Our parents will not be here with us forever, and we will regret it if we do not honor them while they were alive.  Most of us will bury our parents, and we will miss them years after their death.  We should be a blessing to them while we can.  If we are a blessing to our parents and honor them, The Lord God will bless us and grant us a long life.