Albert Einstein is credited as saying, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
I hear ya Albert. I hear ya.
My heart has been stirred up.
No. Not with a welling up of emotion.
It’s more like a backed up storm drain in the late fall. After all of the leaves, sticks, and garbage have fallen to the ground and built up so much that the drain can’t take anymore in… and during a heavy rain you can watch, as all of the debris just swirls and circles around the drain, undulating up and down from pressures deep within the inner workings of the labyrinth of buried drain tile.
The “pressure” I’m feeling is swirling around my current understanding of what… HONOR is.
How do I HONOR God?
How do I HONOR my wife? My kids? Friends? Co-workers?
And… myself?
What does that really mean? We never really hear that word anymore. Maybe at a wedding… “love, honor and cherish”.
The definition doesn’t really help what I’m feeling.
From Merriam-Webster: “to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect : to regard or treat with honor”
I don’t like when they use the word you’re looking up in their definition.
I understand how to “admire” someone.
I understand how to show “respect” to someone or something.
But… to treat with honor… that one, for some reason, recently is escaping me.
The Hebrew word for “honor” is Kabowd, (pronounced kaw-bode’) defined as “to make weighty” “to add weight” to someone or something.
In my personal growth journey… I have grown… I have outgrown some of my previous understandings… and as I continue to learn… I’m learning how much I still need to learn, re-learn, and come to a new understanding.
In my youth I operated with an internal code of “Duty, Discipline and Honor”… but those were only words. I tried to live up to those words by acting like some of my childhood cowboy heroes. With the most evident action I could use daily, being, using the phrase, “Yes ma’am.”
And if I’m being honest with you, inside my heart I would tip my cowboy hat to her… even though I never wore one.
The closest I can come to defining what I think “honor” is, is with a story, I tell it often. It has to do with my father-in-law, who has been gone from us for some time now.
I tell the story of when he became elevated in my eyes, during a rifle sight in outing with him and my two brother-in-laws.
Here’s the gist.
With one shot, leaning across the hood of his truck, after adjusting his glasses, after getting comfortable because he had two false legs, he shoots the center dot out of a target we’d placed down range.
When I placed the target out to distance, before walking back to the truck I took the Sharpie marker I had with me and just touched the tip of the marker to the very center of the target.
I thought he missed when he shot.
He said, “I don’t think so.” And put the gun away. So I had to walk down there and see for myself.
With an old M1 Garand .30-06 he had SHOT THE DOT OUT!!! What the hell??? I’ll never forget that.
And from that moment on I looked at him differently.
And… I still tell that story… every chance I get.
I think that I “honor” him with the re-telling of that story. My heart does well up with emotion when I tell it, a filling, a prideful elation!
In fact, my heart is with him every time I tell that story, I laugh, I cry, and instead of a pile of wet leaves and sticks welling up… I experience all of the good feelings one can muster… when I “raise him up”. His name was Dennis Timm.
That kind of “honor” is the “verb” kind of honor… an action on our part, we add weight to something or someone and then we exert ourselves to “lift them, or it… up to the world.”
That I think sums up “public honor” but then how do we develop our own personal honor? How do we lift ourselves up?
And if we personally profess a belief in God, in Jesus Christ, in The Holy Spirit… how do we lift HIM up?
To “have” honor…to “show” honor… to “experience” being honored… all come back to a condition of the heart.
In the ancient Bushido code of honor, instituted by Japanese Samurai warriors, they detailed how to implement honor, “In order to abide by the principle of honor, you must acknowledge your moral responsibilities.”
In the Bible God says, in Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.”
“Duty, Discipline and Honor”… just words.
“He shot the dot out!”… just words.
“Yes ma’am”… just words.
“Amen”…
So what does your heart say??
Me? I’m still unplugging that storm drain.
Rich Engle says
Thank you Dave for sharing your personal experiences.
I loved the experience you had with Dennis, your Father in Law…..thank you for honoring him.
So glad I had my time with Dennis at King.
Lord bless you and your family…….Rich
Paul K Michiels says
This makes me ponder, good job Dave