It’s been a full day for yours truly. I planned it that way. After I got up, I had breakfast and exercised. Then I got ready for work and wholeheartedly threw myself into it. I had determined ahead of time not to waste a single minute. I therefore set about completing as many tasks as I possibly could in the next several hours, including returning phone calls, answering e-mails, writing notes and letters, working on various other incomplete office projects, sermon planning, etc, etc...
After work, I went walking. Following this, my wife and I made the dreaded “monthly” grocery store trip – the one where we literally “stock up”, and which consumes two hours or more of our time. I am finally now back at home, and am even now returning to my list of projects, one of which is to write this blog post.
So, why am I sharing all of this? Am I somehow trying to impress you with my own personal levels of efficiency and productivity? Am I attempting to come across as braggadocios? No, not exactly. You see, I needed to be extremely busy today – busier than normal. For today, my mother, who passed away this past spring at the age of 79, would have celebrated her 80th birthday!
If the truth be known, from the time I arose this morning, even in the midst of a hundred little projects, I have thought about little else all this day. For this reason, I did take time to call my two sisters and my step-father. They too were all having a hard time dealing with today. They too were keeping busy in order to try and occupy their minds as much as possible – even if they too could not help but keep thinking about this amazing woman that we all loved so much and who touched us all so profoundly.
And yet, as I come to the end of this busy day, I have now concluded that, beyond keeping her memory alive for others, the best way I could ever hope to honor my mother is just to stay busy, to stay active, and above all, to stay productive with the life that I have been given. For other than God Himself, only three individuals were ultimately responsible for that life: my father, my mother, and me, myself.
Together, my parents gave me life. Together, they then raised me. Along the way, they instilled a set of values within me. They gave me a work ethic and taught me to amount to something by using my God-given gifts and talents to glorify Him by trying to make a difference in this world and the world to come.
So, then, could it not be that the best way I could ever have honored my mother on what would have been her 80th birthday was by doing exactly what I did?! Which was in choosing simply to get up and get going?! And to keep on going by making the most of every single minute of this one day? I have decided that it most likely was!
But I have also concluded something else as well. I have concluded that I need to keep on honoring her, not only on just this one particular day, but on every other day that God ever gives me in this world! For both my father and my mother made the most of the days they themselves were given by God. And I know of no better way to honor them than by doing the same with the days God gives to me.
Of course, in choosing to do this, I honor not only them, my earthly parents, but God as my Heavenly Father as well – which is ultimately even more significant. For as the Apostle Paul told the Christians at Colossae (in chapter 3, verse 23 of the New Testament Letter to the Colossians), each of us should work willingly at whatever we do in life, as though we were working for the Lord rather than merely for people.
I conclude, therefore, that honoring our earthly parents is critical; but honoring our Heavenly Father is even more so!
SCRIPTURE SOURCE: https://biblehub.com/colossians/3-23.htm.
After work, I went walking. Following this, my wife and I made the dreaded “monthly” grocery store trip – the one where we literally “stock up”, and which consumes two hours or more of our time. I am finally now back at home, and am even now returning to my list of projects, one of which is to write this blog post.
So, why am I sharing all of this? Am I somehow trying to impress you with my own personal levels of efficiency and productivity? Am I attempting to come across as braggadocios? No, not exactly. You see, I needed to be extremely busy today – busier than normal. For today, my mother, who passed away this past spring at the age of 79, would have celebrated her 80th birthday!
If the truth be known, from the time I arose this morning, even in the midst of a hundred little projects, I have thought about little else all this day. For this reason, I did take time to call my two sisters and my step-father. They too were all having a hard time dealing with today. They too were keeping busy in order to try and occupy their minds as much as possible – even if they too could not help but keep thinking about this amazing woman that we all loved so much and who touched us all so profoundly.
And yet, as I come to the end of this busy day, I have now concluded that, beyond keeping her memory alive for others, the best way I could ever hope to honor my mother is just to stay busy, to stay active, and above all, to stay productive with the life that I have been given. For other than God Himself, only three individuals were ultimately responsible for that life: my father, my mother, and me, myself.
Together, my parents gave me life. Together, they then raised me. Along the way, they instilled a set of values within me. They gave me a work ethic and taught me to amount to something by using my God-given gifts and talents to glorify Him by trying to make a difference in this world and the world to come.
So, then, could it not be that the best way I could ever have honored my mother on what would have been her 80th birthday was by doing exactly what I did?! Which was in choosing simply to get up and get going?! And to keep on going by making the most of every single minute of this one day? I have decided that it most likely was!
But I have also concluded something else as well. I have concluded that I need to keep on honoring her, not only on just this one particular day, but on every other day that God ever gives me in this world! For both my father and my mother made the most of the days they themselves were given by God. And I know of no better way to honor them than by doing the same with the days God gives to me.
Of course, in choosing to do this, I honor not only them, my earthly parents, but God as my Heavenly Father as well – which is ultimately even more significant. For as the Apostle Paul told the Christians at Colossae (in chapter 3, verse 23 of the New Testament Letter to the Colossians), each of us should work willingly at whatever we do in life, as though we were working for the Lord rather than merely for people.
I conclude, therefore, that honoring our earthly parents is critical; but honoring our Heavenly Father is even more so!
SCRIPTURE SOURCE: https://biblehub.com/colossians/3-23.htm.