12 Simple Words that Changed the way I Look at Life and Other People

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: 3 “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” Ephesians 6:1-2

My Grandmother and Mother at my Grandmother’s 100th Birthday Party

One summer when I was ten years old I spent a week with my grandmother in Arkansas, just a couple hours from where I lived in Oklahoma. At the end of the week my mother came to pick me up. As we were all visiting, my mother said something, and I responded with a rude comment. My grandmother told me, “You don’t talk that way to your mother!” I thought she was going to say, because she is the boss of me or bigger than me or something like that, but what my grandmother said next took me by surprise and I have never forgotten. She finished by saying, “You don’t talk that way to someone who would die for you!” My grandmother was right.

Of course we obey those in authority because they do know best. We respect them because of their wisdom, experience and guidance, but we should always honor our parents because they love us so much they would give their life for us.

This does not mean we cannot have disagreements, but those disagreements should always be respectful disagreements, keeping in mind the person we are disagreeing with loves us so much he or she would give their life for us. This also goes for school teachers. How many tragic school shooting stories have included a teacher dying while protecting her students, even though those students may have been very disrespectful to her? It also goes for law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line. Just earlier this summer I read about an off-duty police officer who intentionally got in the path of a wrong way driver and gave his life, to save others who would have been hit. Before cursing the stranger who took the parking space we were aiming for, remember you don’t know their story. Maybe they have risked their lives to save another life. Maybe they were the ones who donated the blood that saved your uncle’s life. Maybe they would take a bullet for you too, you never know.

“You don’t talk that way to someone who would die for you.” Twelve simple but profound words, I heard uttered one time almost 50 years ago, that have changed the entire way I look at life and other people.

Amen!