What My Father Left Behind

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” — Exodus 20:12

Tomorrow would have been my dad’s eighty-sixth birthday. He has been gone three years now, and birthdays have a way of making absence feel different. They bring back memories, certainly, but they also make us think about what remains after someone we love is no longer here.

Lately I have been thinking about that in connection with the fifth commandment: “Honour thy father and thy mother.” We usually learn those words when we are children, and naturally we associate them with obedience. Clean your room. Mind your mother. Listen to your father. But the commandment is much larger than childhood. Paul calls it “the first commandment with promise” (Ephesians 6:2), and nowhere does Scripture suggest that honor expires when we grow up—or even when our parents die.

The word translated “honour” carries the idea of giving weight or significance to someone. That doesn’t mean pretending our parents were flawless. Scripture certainly doesn’t do that with its own families. Abraham failed. Isaac made mistakes. Jacob’s family could have kept a counselor busy for years. Yet God tells their stories honestly, without erasing either their faith or their failures.

That tells me something important about honor. Honor is not pretending the difficult parts never happened. Neither is it putting another human being on a pedestal where only God belongs. It is recognizing the significance of the life God placed in relationship to ours and receiving with gratitude what was good, godly, and worth carrying forward.

One of those things for me is very simple. For as long as I can remember, my dad began and ended his days the same way—with prayer and the Word of God. Morning after morning, evening after evening, there was that steady rhythm. He believed strongly in God and in what the Bible stood for.

I probably didn’t understand the significance of that consistency when I was younger. Children seldom realize that the ordinary things they see repeated day after day are quietly becoming part of their inheritance. But now I see something in my father’s routine that means more to me than it did then. He wasn’t demonstrating that a man of faith never struggles, never fails, or always gets everything right. He was demonstrating where a man goes because he knows he needs God.

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).

There is something wonderfully unremarkable about an open Bible on an ordinary morning. No audience, no applause, nothing impressive enough to make anybody’s highlight reel—just a person meeting with God before facing another day and, when that day is finished, returning to Him again.

Maybe that is where some of our greatest inheritances are found—not in the extraordinary moments we remember, but in the ordinary things someone faithfully repeated.

Paul saw something similar in Timothy. He remembered “the unfeigned faith” that had first dwelt in Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, and then added, “I am persuaded that in thee also” (2 Timothy 1:5). Their faith had traveled. Not because faith itself can be inherited—we each must choose Christ for ourselves—but because Timothy had witnessed something genuine enough to show him where to look.

I think that gives another dimension to “Honour thy father and thy mother.” There comes a time when honoring our parents is no longer primarily about what we do for them. It becomes partly about what we do with what they gave us.

My dad has been gone three years. I cannot call him tomorrow and wish him a happy birthday. I cannot buy him a card, sit beside him, ask him a question, or hear him pray one more prayer. But death has not made Exodus 20:12 irrelevant. I can still honor my father.

I can remember truthfully, be grateful without pretending, forgive what needs forgiving, learn from what needs learning, and carry forward what pointed me toward God.

Some people inherit their father’s eyes or their mother’s laugh. We inherit recipes and sayings, old photographs, tools, traditions, and stories that somehow get funnier every time the family tells them. But there are inheritances that cannot be packed into a box: an open Bible, a bowed head, and the memory of a life that kept returning to God.

Tomorrow I will think about the eighty-six candles that will not be on a birthday cake, and I will miss my dad. But I will also remember something he showed me over a lifetime of ordinary mornings and evenings: God’s Word is worth opening every day, and prayer is a good place for a day to both begin and end.

One of the greatest ways I can honor him now is to keep doing the same.

If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.

👉 Sign up for the free FAST Crash Course in Bible Memorization: http://fast.st/cc/21419