-Planning ahead and taking care of your oikos, your household. It's about the kind of foresight which allows you to provide. Provision usually requires some forethought. Planning ahead. This is what we do for our families. Or should. Which includes our parents. The context completely supports this. But this is sure inconvenient, isn’t it? All those resources you could be spending on yourself, to have to spend them on your parents? It’s not like they birthed you and raised you and scrimped and saved and sacrificed for 20+ years on your behalf or something... I jest. :) These ones who gave so much for you - should you not care for them when they are no longer able to care for themselves, much less you, anymore?
-The Lord takes this very seriously. Failure to provide for your family is spiritual treason. A denial of the faith, Paul says. Worse than unbelieving - which is hard to imagine conceptually, but Paul puts it out there. Worse than an unbeliever, is the one who fails to provide for their family. Cuz even unbelievers will care for their own. This thinking and planning ahead of course doesn’t mean that you fully anticipate every eventuality, every tragedy or loss. It is more of a mindset of care and commitment, to take care of those closest to me, and this includes my parents. Now since parents aren’t perfect, invariably there will be those relationships which have been strained and even severed over the years, neglect, abuse, abandonment - a long line of abuses may mean that providing for my family begins with showing grace and forgiveness to the one(s) who perhaps fell short in providing and caring for me. Showing them the love of God by working to rebuild that which was destroyed, or which perhaps never got very far off the ground to begin with. Honor your mother and father - this is indeed the first command with a promise (Exodus 20.12, cf Ephesians 6.2). What might that look like for you and for me today? This week? This year?
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