Me Thinks

I am really enjoying the Ezra Taft Benson Manual that we are studying from this year in Relief Society.  Today I read a lesson from the manual about the elderly in the church.  Here are some wonderful points from President Benson:

We encourage families to give their elderly parents and grandparents the love, care, and attention they deserve.

To honor and respect our parents means that we have a high regard for them.  We love and appreciate them and are concerned about their happiness and well-being.  We treat them with courtesy and thoughtful consideration.  We seek to understand their point of view.

Furthermore, our parents deserve our honor and respect for giving us life itself.  Beyond this they almost always made countless sacrifices as they cared for and nurtured us through our infancy and childhood, provided us with the necessities of life, and nursed us through physical illnesses and the emotional stresses of growing up.  In many instances, they provided us with the opportunity to receive an education, and, in a measure, they educated us.  Much of what we know and do we learned from their example.  May we ever be grateful to them and show that gratitude.

Let us also learn to be forgiving of our parents, who, perhaps having made mistakes as they reared us, almost always did the best they knew how.  

May we ever forgive them as we would likewise wish to be forgiven by our own children for mistakes we make.

Grandparents can have a profound influence on their grandchildren.  

Those who are blessed with a closeness to grandparents and other elderly people have a rich companionship and association. 

 

 

I learned a lot as I watched my parents show love for their parents in their elderly years.  This love and caring service was never a burden but was seen as a blessing.