RESPECT

The other day I was mowing our back lawn. We don’t have a very large lawn but in a back area of this lawn we have one of my all time best friends buried. His name was Dusty. Dusty was the best Golden Retriever that ever lived. He lived a wonderfully long life for a Golden Retriever. He finally died of old age at age 15. His whole life was devoted to doing whatever he could to please my wife Bonnie and I. He was always there at any time even when he was not feeling like it, to be our friend. When he died it broke our hearts and we ordered a stone marker to mark his grave. On it we had inscribed “The Best Friend Ever”. My wife also wanted to have inscribed on it “Our Puppy” because that is what she always called him. Bonnie did something else. She took the double dish that we had fed him in and she put two rocks in them and placed that at the head of his grave right above the stone marker. That thing has been there now for four years. Because of the water that would freeze in it during the winter, that double dish has both sides of it broken. It is filled with green and not very pretty. While I was mowing the grass I kicked it aside so that I could mow around it and I thought it looked ugly and should be thrown away. After second thought I put it back exactly like my wife Bonnie had put it there because I dearly respect my wife and her feelings. I remembered how we both had cried when our 15 year old “Puppy”, “The Best Friend Ever” had died. I decided that however ugly those dishes were, they were still there because my wife had been leaving them there and they meant something to her, and I respect her.

In the historical remembrance of the life of David, there is a place in II Samuel where it speaks of three mighty men who stood with David. The names of these men were Adino, Eleazar and Shammah. There it describes super human things that they did. One thing it describes was when David, with these three mighty men were then in an hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem. While they were in hiding it says “And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!” He didn’t realize what these three might men out of respect for their King would do. It goes on and says; “And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David:” Once again we see God provide us with another tremendous example of respect because we read; “nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD. and he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it.

The understanding and practice of respect is sadly becoming a lost quality. We are regularly seeing things that we grew up doing out of respect, not being done now because it seems that people don't even understand the concept. I was taught that as a man, I should not on most cases wear my hat inside a building out of respect. I was taught to say "yes Mam or no Mam", "yes Sir or no Sir." The way we dressed up in our best Sunday go to meeting cloths was out of respect for the Lord's Day.

Unless we install within our hearts and minds principles and practices from the Word Of God we will have no more understanding of things like respect than some dumb cow. This is why good solid preaching from the Word Of God is so important. This is why it is so important for God’s people to be where the Word is being preached and taught on a regular basis.

God help me to learn respect!