Top X July 12, 2025 Devotional
July 12, 2025
EXODUS 20:12 | 12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
No one is born independent, self-sufficient, or self-supporting. Children are utterly dependent on their parents for nurture, security, protection, and instruction. Part of honoring parents is acknowledging the practical debt we owe to them; without them we would not exist.
Framed socially, we can take this command as advice about our attitude toward all previous generations. The chief error of contemporary Western culture is disdain for the past, dismissal of the debt owed to ancestors. Too often the recent is assumed to be revolutionary, the novel to be noteworthy, the new to be necessary and the present to be profound. Technological development is conflated with moral and spiritual development and past wisdom deemed outdated, provincial, and passé. Yet almost every word and concept we use is inherited and has a history. Great minds from the past and proverbial truths remain great despite our present tense bias.
What is your attitude to past generations? Suspicion? Caution? Reverence? Indifference?
Gracious God,
Help me to rediscover the power of traditions and the value of all You have revealed and accomplished in previous generations.
Amen.
