Do not rebuke harshly...

Dear Friends,

“Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” (Timothy 5:1-2, NIV)

Good instruction to young and old alike here, but our focus is on the older men and women today.

“Do not rebuke an older man harshly.” If you disagree with him, do so civilly. If he has wronged you, resist the urge to speak rudely. Honor his years with politeness and courteous speech. This is God’s way. It is also God’s way to treat older women like your mother.

And remember, it was God who commanded it plain as day: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12, NIV) Similar words were recorded for us in Leviticus 19:3. “Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:3, NIV)

Once there was a little old man. His eyes blinked and his hands trembled; when he ate he clattered the silverware distressingly, missed his mouth with the spoon as often as not, and dribbled a bit of his food on the tablecloth.

Now he lived with his married son, having nowhere else to live, and his son’s wife didn’t like the arrangement. “I can’t have this,” she said. “It interferes with my right to happiness.”

So she and her husband took the old man gently but firmly by the arm and led him to the corner of the kitchen. There they set him on a stool and gave him his food in an earthenware bowl. From then on he always ate in the corner, blinking at the table with wistful eyes.

One day his hands trembled rather more than usual, and the earthenware bowl fell and broke. “If you are a pig,” said his daughter-in-law, “you must eat out of a trough.” So they made him a little wooden trough, and he got his meals in that.

These people had a four-year-old son of whom they were very fond. One evening the young man noticed his boy playing intently with some bits of wood and asked what he was doing. “I’m making a trough,” he said, smiling up for approval, “to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big.”

The man and his wife looked at each other for awhile and didn’t say anything. Then they cried a little. Then they went to the corner and took the old man by the arm and led him back to the table. They sat him in a comfortable chair and gave him his food on a plate, and from then on nobody ever scolded when he clattered or spilled or broke things. (Joy Davidman, from Smoke on the Mountain)

Grimm’s fairy tales have a way of making a point, don’t they? His point is the same as God’s. “Do not rebuke an older man harshly…treat older women as mothers…”

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