Honor

Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:32

Ebb and Flow

I found this quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in "A Gift from the Sea." It is both a profound observation and a sad commentary on the nature of human relationships:

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time. in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity in freedom. The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. Once must accept the serenity of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.

Two initial thoughts:

1) Understanding the natural ebb and flow of human relationships can help us liberate our friends and family from our unrealistic expectations that so often lead to complete relationship burn-out. Even if we wanted to love with absolute permanency, we could not. Work, moves, marriage, time, death--all these factors and more cause irrevocable changes.

2) Thanks to God that He does not love us like we love each other Instead of ebb and flow from God, we get immeasurably wide, long, high, and deep love that surpasses all knowledge.