Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1289 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Rise Up! – Meditation Monday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.  Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.  Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1289 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.  Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.  For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.  You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer.  It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.  As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

 In our meditation today, let us consider:
Rise Up!
During my devotional/Bible study time, I came across a verse from the book of Leviticus 19:32 and it caused me to ponder a bit.  Let me read it to you. Stand up in the presence of the elderly, and show respect for the aged. Fear your God. I am the Lord.  Leviticus is a book in what is referred to as the Torah, which is attributed to Moses as the author.  Leviticus specifically dives into the Old Testament laws that God established for the fledgling nation of Israel.  Many times students of the Bible will skim through this book, or skip it completely, since many of the laws don’t really apply to what is called the Age of Grace, which are the precepts that Jesus Christ and the New Testament teaches us.  The verse I read is part of the Old Testament law, but it is still a valuable principle for our lives today.

This is probably more on my heart now since our parents are elderly and need the care of others.   My Dad is in a nursing home, and while he still remembers us, he has chronic dementia, can hardly hear us, even with hearing aids, and his conversations are very short, circular, and repeated over and over.  Very recently, we also had to move Paula’s mom into an assisted living home after 10 years of living with Paula and me.  It has come to the point where she needs more help than we can provide since we are both still working full time.

So the question that we ponder is, how can we best honor our parents as they continue to slowly slide down that slope of age-related issues?  One of the ways we show our loyalty to God is to honor our parents, and indeed, all elders.  This takes me back to our own parenting skills with our five children and their spouses.First, we model what we wanted our children to become.  In the case with my Dad and Paula’s Mom, demonstrating care and concern for them, and all the elderly is, very important. As we did when they were young, our grown children need to see that the value of a life is not dependent on how much a person can accomplish, or even do own their own.  The elderly deserve our respect and love simply because they were created as God’s image-bearers, just as we are.  Besides, we are not in a position to evaluate someone else’s contribution to society, and especially their value to God.  There is no limit to what someone can accomplish simply through their prayers.

Second, just as we worked hard to create a warm, safe environment of unconditional love for our children, we must do the same for the elderly.  As we age and lose our cognitive and physical abilities,