Journey to Ephesus

Day 23

'Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honour your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— "so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.'

Ephesians 6:1-4

Oh goodie. A verse that tells you to be a good child. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like 'forgetting' about something like this in the bible. Yeah, your parents tell you to obey them, but when the bible tells you to obey your parents, it's a bit different. You know that with the bible, religion gets thrown in there, which makes being rebellious a whole lot harder. Well, here's the idea. You honour your parents - you enjoy life on Earth more. And I guess that's really true. Your parents, even though they might sound like they're giving you a hard time, they're really just helping you to get the most out of every situation without ending up in a whole load of trouble.

Looking at the list of the 10 commandments, I started thinking about something. Most of the stuff in there is like, 'you shall not steal, you shall not have idols, etc.' So why is 'Honour your mother and father' right up there with don't murder or commit adultery? It must be a very important thing for God to have it as one of the 10 commandments. Furthermore, it is one of the only two things that DON'T start with 'you shall not', which is pretty cool, actually, because it's positive and not negative.

Basically, I think that the relationship between parents and children is a big thing for Christianity. I mean, look back over the entire bible! Abraham: as many sons as there are stars in the sky. Jacob: he had 12 sons as you will know if you have ever seen/heard Joseph and his Technicolour dream-coat from the song 'Jacob and sons'. Moses: kill the first-born sons. Mary: you will have a son, though you are not married. Jesus: son of God. And even more importantly, we are sons and daughters of God! So yeah, there are a lot of examples of parent/child relationships throughout the bible.

OK, it's all very cool to know, but what does this actually mean? To be honest, what it means is to love your parents, love your children (if you have any) and love God. Don't think that there are loads of more important things in Christianity that you should spend your time thinking about, because just honouring and respecting, loving and caring for your parents is a thing God will be proud of.

Prayer

Dear Lord,

Thank you for giving me wonderful parents. Thank you for being my daddy and always keeping me close. Please help me to honour my parents. Help me to love my kids (if I have them) as well, and to let them know that they are loved.

Amen