“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord is giving you.” Exodus 20:12 NIV

This is one of the ten commandments that God gave to Moses and the people after they left Egypt and slavery. The commandments are God’s guidelines for living a good life. They tell us things like; to love God first, to keep the Sabbath day holy, to not lie, to not steal and to honor our father and mother. (You can look them all up in Exodus in the Bible. Ask your mom and dad to help you.)

But there is something special about this commandment, it comes with a promise; “so that you may live long”. This commandment is for moms and dads, but since yesterday was Mother’s Day, we’re going to talk about moms today. (We’ll talk about our dads on Father’s Day!)

What does it mean to “honor” your mom? Honor means to show respect and admiration for someone, to value their authority. When we honor our moms, we listen to what they tell us, we do the things that they ask us (like clean our room), we appreciate them for all they do for us (cook us dinner, love us, take care of us, hug us…), and we love them.

What did you do for your mom on Mother’s Day? Did you cook her breakfast, did you make her a card, did you get her some flowers, did you give her a big hug and tell her you loved her? All of those things are honoring your mom! But we need to honor our moms every day, not only on Mother’s Day each year. We need to respect and admire and obey our moms every day.

When we get older, we sometimes don’t want to do what our moms ask us to do. Sometimes we get mad and may want to say hurtful things to our mom. But in order to follow God’s commandment to honor our mom, we can’t be disrespectful or unkind or disobedient. We can talk gently about what we want, but we have to honor our mom because of who she is.

Every day this week, find a way to honor your mom. Say thank you for something she does for you. Give her a hug and tell her you love her. Bring her a snack. Do what she asks the first time. Help her with a chore. Be kind. Make it “mother’s day” every day!

And even though today we are talking about honoring our moms, don’t forget that the commandment includes our dads, too!

Blessings and honor and love every day!