WWJD What Would Jesus Do? Matthew 15:1-9

Should children take care of their parents in their old age or should children not be expected to carry that burden? No parent wants to be a burden and often times the children have families of their own to consider. It's a tough question and can only be answered in each individual case.

My dear friend Sandy is in that situation right now. She is finally in a rehab facility trying to get her strength back after open heart surgery in January. Each of the family members has rotated in to care for Ken who has stage four Parkinson's Disease while Sandy has been absent. Now the time has come for some tough decisions.  Ken will be moving to Saint Louis next week to live with his younger brother. This leaves Sandy alone in Tucson. It breaks my heart but it's not my decision to make.

God commands us to honor our mother and father. That's an action. It means to treat them with respect. The Pharisees, in their greed, ignored this command. They imposed man made laws that superseded Gods command. This left the children without funds to care for their ailing parents. That is not what God wanted and Jesus let the Pharisees know it.

When faced with the tough choices, there's an easy solution. Just ask what Jesus would do and do it.

Matthew 15:1-9

1 Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked Him, 2 “Why do your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat.”

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? 4 For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ 5 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ 6 In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

8‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.9 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

Blessings, Cecilia