Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), "that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth." Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:1-4, RSV

In The University of Hard Knocks, Ralph Parlette tells a story of his mother that probably would have gotten her investigated today. It happened when he was sitting at the highest seat at the table when he was but three years old. He recalls that he had spotted a coffee pot, a bright and gleaming and beautiful coffee pot, and decided that he just had to have it. But his mother said, "Don't touch it!"

In Ralph's memory of this event he said that this woman was a meddler. He said that there was not one thing that this woman had not interfered with in his entire three years of life and it was time to stop this "petticoat tyranny".

And he did!

He said that he dumped about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee that a bad boy had ever spilled in his lap. For weeks after that he was upholstered in everything from chicken fat to coal oil as he was being treated for his burns. The ladies aid society agreed that allowing her son to be burned was no way to treat this angel child, but his mother knew.

Did you have a mother that did not fully appreciate the "angel child" that she was raising in you? I did. I remember when I was just a bit older than Ralph in his coffee pot incident when I, too, had decided that my mother had interfered a bit too often in my life. I had heard a phrase from the other kids in the neighborhood that I had been dying to try out, when the day came that I had the opportunity to do so.

Mom was vacuuming and I had hopped up on a chair to get away from the vacuum, only to have Mom tell me to stop standing on the furniture. However, I was prepared this time to end her interfering in my life with the magic phrase I had heard from my associates down the block. I stood up and said defiantly, "I don't have to if I don't want to."

Some people after a traumatic incident will say something along the lines of "I didn't even knew what hit me". I did... it was mother! She slapped this fresh little four year old on his fresh big mouth and put an end once and for all to that type of behavior.

Now, there will be some in our modern day equivalents to the ladies aid societies of old who will agree that this was no way to treat an angel child, but my mom didn't care a whit about what they would have thought. She was training a naughty boy to grow up to be a good man, and she taught me a lesson in the only way that seemed appropriate for the time.  And, I can honestly say that I do not remember talking back to my mother or father, even through my teen years, ever again.

My mom and dad are gone now, but I will always love them for raising me by godly standards. They knew that I would stand before God in Judgment someday and either by His grace and the sacrifice of His Son be granted entrance to the one place I do not deserve - Heaven, or by my own stubbornness and sin be thrown into the place that no one wants to go no matter how much they deserve it - Hell.

My Mom and Dad taught me to honor them, and to so honor God. And I will never be able to thank them enough! How about you?