Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honour your father and mother’—this is the first commandment with a promise: ‘so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’ And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Reflection
I write this reflection a couple of days after taking my eighteen-year-old, youngest child down to London to start a job and, in ways that I haven’t quite processed yet, embark upon the rest of his life. His new start concludes my forty-year stint of having school age children at home. Big changes all round! Amongst sorting out other practicalities, I asked him if I could add him to the app on my phone that tells me in real time where people are. As an afterthought I said, ‘if you are wiling for me to know where you are, I’m more than happy for you to know where I am at any time’. We struck a deal, a deal based on mutuality and trust.
This passage from Ephesians, notwithstanding the slight ambiguity about whether it refers to a biological or church-based spiritual relationship, strikes me as also being focussed on the notion of mutuality – ‘children, obey your parents… fathers, don’t annoy your children unnecessarily but help them to grow well …’ What strikes me also is that the concern here is less about checks and balances but rather more about how to enable flourishing and both child and parent realising their potential unencumbered by unnecessary obstacles.
The importance of this trusting, loving, enabling mutuality in relationships extends way beyond the family and offers an insight into God’s intention for human cooperation, creativity, and support at all levels. Simply put, isn’t it best to work together with mutual respect and an underlying desire to fulfil the potential for good in each of us?
At a time when stirring distrust, division and open hatred are the favoured approach of many who are motivated by malice, wealth and power, these ostensibly simple words from a letter to Ephesian Christians long of ago and far away offer a ‘yet more excellent way’ for us to live and model for the benefit of all.
Prayer
Today, dear Lord,
make me more willing
to bless than criticise
to listen than dominate
to allow than to overwhelm
and to enable whoever I meet
to flourish as you intend. Amen
