Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old. – Proverbs 23:22

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 6, 2016): Proverbs 23

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” The words belong to Mark Twain. But it is unlikely they come from his own personal experience. John Marshall Clemons, Samuel Clemons’ (a.k.a. Mark Twain’s) father, died when Mark was only twelve years old. But just because Mark didn’t get a chance to watch his father grow exponentially smarter, doesn’t mean that his words weren’t right. It is our collective experience. When we are young, we think we know so much. Our parents don’t really understand the way things are. But we do. We understand fully the world in which we live.

And then something happens. We grow older. We begin to realize that maybe we didn’t know as much as we thought we did about life and that our parents knew a lot more than we thought they did. And it is not just about our parents and us; it is a revolving door that happens generation after generation. The young believe that they know until they grow up a little and begin to discover how much they don’t know.

But maybe what our current culture lacks is a respect owed to those who are our elders. Other cultures have enshrined this regard for the older person in their cultural mores. But we seem to have lost that concept. It is not that we have lost our debt of respect for the wisdom of those who have seen so much more of life than we have, we have just forgotten about that debt– and we need to be reminded.

Proverbs gives us that reminder. Remember your parents – the ones who, according to Twain, are growing wiser at an unprecedented rate. We owe them so much – and they consistently prove to us that they have learned the lessons of life that we need to learn. So we give them the honor and space in our lives that they deserve – and that we need.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 24