Key Bible Verse: Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. EXODUS 20:12

Bonus Reading: John 17; Romans 12:10

In an age of parent-bashing, it honors our father and mother to remember their positive qualities. My dad taught me powerful lessons about giving.

When I was a teenager, Dad would come in my room and say, "C'mon, kid, let's go."

"Where to?"

"Lucy's." Once a month he would visit Lucy Butchko, a woman whose body was twisted and pinned into a wheelchair by arthritis. He would reach his big arms around her frail body and lift her out of the wheelchair and place her in the front seat of our brown station wagon. Then he would fold the wheelchair, throw it in back, and drive Lucy to the monthly Communion service for shut-ins.

Here was a vice-president of a publishing company, shttling shut-ins.

Later, while in the hospital, trying to recover from a massive heart attack, Dad found out that a family down the street didn't have enough money to buy groceries. So he wrote them a check.

It was the last thing he ever wrote, and a lasting lesson in giving.

—Kevin A. Miller
an editor near Chicago

• If your father and mother are still alive, how could you honor them?

Thought to Apply
Children not only need a father, they long for one, irrationally, with all the undiluted strength of a child's hopeful heart.
—Maggie Gallagher (writer)

Men of Integrity Devotional Drawing on themes of the Promise Keepers movement, this daily devotional guide brings you compelling stories, timely quotes, practical help, and personal challenges together in an easy-to-read, easy to apply format.

Excerpted from the Men of Integrity Devotional, week 12, Friday. Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Used by permission of Word Publishing Company, Nashville, TN. All rights reserved. For reprint information call 630-260-6200.