Ephesians 6:3

This verse is part of the apostle Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus, a city in what is now modern Turkey. Paul is quoting directly from the Ten Commandments — specifically the fifth commandment to honor your father and mother. He points out something easy to miss: this was the first commandment God gave that came attached to a specific promise — that life would go well and be long. Paul is writing to encourage believers to take this commandment seriously, not just as an ancient rule, but as something God himself backed with a blessing. The word "honor" in the original Greek means to treat someone as weighty and valuable — to take them seriously.

God, parenting and being parented is complicated and I don't always know what honoring looks like. Help me let go of what bitterness I've been carrying, not to excuse harm but to stop being defined by it. Show me one step toward honoring well — and give me the courage to take it. Amen.

Of all the commandments God could have stapled a promise to, he chose this one. Not "don't murder" or "don't steal" — things with obvious consequences. He chose honor your parents, and said: do this, and your life will go well. That's arresting. It suggests there's something about how we treat the people who raised us that shapes the kind of people we become — and the kind of life we build. Maybe your parents were wonderful. Maybe they were absent, or harmful, or somewhere painfully in between — which is most of us, honestly. Honoring someone doesn't mean pretending the wounds didn't happen. It means refusing to let bitterness become the architect of your life. It means finding what was good, or at minimum, acknowledging that they were human too. What would it free in you — not in them — to take one honest step toward honoring a parent, even imperfectly, even now?