“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
Exodus 20:12
Life seems to move so much faster than our little feet and tiny minds can comprehend. We spend so much time moving forward in the rat race that is life that we often forget to look back at the ones who brought us to the place we are currently positioned. It all started at home in the loving embrace and warmth of our parents. Parenting is not an easy job and is possibly the hardest job the Lord could give us. The greatest concern as parents is for our children to grow to love God above all else.
Obedience to parents forms the foundation of a just relationship between God and man so long as parents are adhering to the Word of God as they should. We as children, regardless of our upbringing, first learn to love through our obedience, trust, and dependence on our mother and father. The love and care we receive from our parents is the beginning of our learning how to love and depend on God. If we never learned how to love our parents, whom we experience with our five senses, how would we expect to love the Heavenly Father to whom we love not by sight, but by faith?
Whether you realize it or not parents, you taught us love, dependence, and trust in the Heavenly Father. You set us on the path from our early beginnings when we entered this world that would lead us to becoming a new creation when the Lord made His abode in our heart and life. If it were not for you, we would not know how to love God and receive His tender mercies and precious care that all started with you. If we never learned to love our parents, we never would have learned to love God, and we never would have learned to love our fellow man. To take it a step further, we would not have learned to love our spouse, our own children, and eventually grandchildren to lead them to God’s Love in return.
This devotion is just a moment to reflect and thank our parents for teaching us how to love our Heavenly Father. If we were not first your child and love you the way we do, then we would have never become His child and loved God the way you loved us.
