Parenting Tips from My Daddy

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It is with joy and precious memories that I honor my Daddy on what would have been his 91st birthday. Here is a picture of Daddy with his parents, Sue and Leland Boyd . . .

. . . and with his mother and her mother, Cora Head.

How I have missed him these last 18 years. This is our last picture together, taken on my 50th birthday. When Ray asked me what I would like to do for my birthday that year, I said I would like to visit my parents, saying, “Who gets to do that on their 50th birthday?” How blessed I felt that day.

Today I’d like to share some of the parenting tips that I learned from Daddy.

• Daddy loved my mother. Here they are on their wedding day.

• Daddy adored his own children and his nieces and nephews. He loved other children, too, and gave them his attention.

• Daddy worked hard to provide for his family.

• Daddy loved to learn.
• Daddy took us to church “every time the door was open,” as we say in the South.
• Daddy led us in thanking God every time we sat down for a meal.
• Daddy took us to playgrounds and state parks and historic sites and the county fair and the state fair and the beach and the mountains. Here are Daddy and Mother inside Mammoth Cave, . . .

. . . at the Memphis Zoo, . . .

. . .  and at Opryland.

Honoring our parents is a privilege. The best time to honor our parents is while they are alive and can enjoy the great blessing of our love and respect. However, after my mother passed away, I realized that the opportunity to honor my parents didn’t end just because they aren’t on earth anymore.

Besides being a privilege, God’s word commands that we honor our parents and tells the outcome of obeying that command.

Honor your father and your mother,
that your days may be prolonged in the land
which the Lord your God gives you.
Exodus 20:12

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

The apostle Paul repeats this command in the letter to the church in Ephesus:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
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 6:1-2

During Jesus’ ministry, the Jewish Pharisees and scribes confronted Him again and again. In Matthew 15, Jesus talked to them about the Law’s command to honor fathers and mothers and told them how they were disobeying it.

Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”

And He answered and said to them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever I have that would help you has been given to God,” he is not to honor his father or his mother.’ And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you:

‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
‘But in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”
Matthew 15:1-9

Besides commanding honor for parents, God’s Word also assumes that children will honor their fathers. The book of Malachi begins with an oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through His prophet Malachi. God condemns Israel’s priests in verse 6 of the first chapter.

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master.
Then if I am a father, where is My honor?
And if I am a master, where is My respect?”
says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name.
Malachi 1:6a

And so today it is my privilege to honor my own precious father and to celebrate his birthday.

Pay to all what is due them:
tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom;
respect to whom respect; honor to whom honor.
Romans 13:7

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