Genuine Love and Concern and Action
“Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend . . . ” was among the Proverbs we studied yesterday in Sunday school. As I sat:
- beside my friend who retired from the local nursing home after 39 years and
- near my friend who faithfully visits and serves her neighbor who is there temporarily for rehab and
- near another friend who not only devotedly takes loving care of her mom who resides there but who also coordinates the churches who volunteer there one Sunday a month to have church services for the residents and
- near another friend who is currently wondering how long her mother can live alone until she needs another living arrangement,
I thought about how much better life would be for our local nursing home residents if people obeyed that Proverb.
Do not forsake your own friend
or your father’s friend, . . .
Proverbs 27:10
When I made that comment in class, my friend whose mother lives there added knowingly: “and their parents.” It breaks her heart that so many children neglect their parents who live there.
I have written often about God’s commands to honor our fathers and mothers. We not only bless them when we do that, we get blessings, too. God Himself has told us that specifically in the Old Testament:
Honor your father and your mother,
as the Lord your God has commanded you,
that your days may be prolonged
and that it may go well with you on the land
which the Lord your God gives you.
Deuteronomy 5:16
And in the New Testament:
Honor your father and mother
(which is the first commandment with a promise),
so that it may be well with you,
and that you may live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6:2-3
Honoring our father’s (and our mother’s) friends also gives us blessings. I love every chance I get to be with anyone who knew my parents. My heart beams when they say kind things about them. Encounters are extra-special when someone tells me an anecdote I never knew.
One of my mother’s friends brought this painting to my mother’s funeral visitation. Mother had painted it and given it to her friend. Her friend wanted me to have it. When she handed it to me, she said, “Your mother was a smart woman.” People had used many kind adjectives when complimenting my mother to me. That was the first time anyone had used the word smart. I’m glad she noticed, and I’m glad she told me. I wish Mother could have heard it, too.
In this photo, it appears that I keep Mother’s painting outside, but it is actually in my office, which was once a porch.
I love the kindnesses in God’s Word. Since He made us, He knows what we need, not only spiritually and physically, but emotionally, too. He knows we all long to be noticed and to be remembered. Is there anything much lonelier than feeling forgotten?
One of our jobs as parents is to train our children to overcome tendencies to be centered on themselves and to replace self-centeredness with genuine love and concern and action for others. Paul told the Thessalonians:
Now as to the love of the brethren,
you have no need for anyone to write to you,
for you yourselves are taught by God
to love one another;
for indeed you do practice it
toward all the brethren
who are in all Macedonia.
But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more . . .
1 Thessalonians 4:9-10
In 1 John, God teaches us:
Little children, let us not
love with word or with tongue,
but in deed and truth.
1 John 3:18