Weighing Honor

How is respect or honor a form of love? I left you with this question in our last post. We could go in many directions here, so I’ve chosen a few strands that at first may not seem related, but I think you’ll agree with me that they are multicolored threads woven into the same blanket.  Let me take you to a nursery rhyme. Yes, many children’s rhymes are for adults.

You remember the nursery rhyme, “Three Blind Mice.”  Some have tried to link this poem to Mary I, often called Bloody Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII.  That is not the story line I want to follow.  Just think of three blind mice running or hobbling around in confusion. That’s it.  We don’t need to quote the poem; you probably have it in your head.

However, I’d like to quote a “take off” of this rhyme from The Christian Mother Goose Book (Volume 1) by Marjorie Ainsborough Decker.  In contrast, her version is called “Three Kind Mice.”

Three kind mice,

See what they’ve done!

They helped a lost chick

To find Mother Hen,

They brought some food

To the church mice, then

They cleaned up the tree house

For Jenny Wren,

Those three kind mice.

 In Decker’s kind version, we witness honor and love demonstrated through kind acts.  This shows that when we love others by treating them with human dignity and serving them, we honor them.

Honor. You know, in our key verse, I Peter 2:17, we are instructed to “show proper respect” and to “honor.”  Both of these are translations of the same Greek word, which carries the following ideas:

1. To treat with esteem, respect, bestowing special marks of honor and favor upon someone.

2. To prize and value; to treat as precious and valuable.

Kind mice, that is, kind creatures are not blind. They see that only God has ultimate worth, value, and glory, which He gives as a reflection of Himself to His creation.  They see the value of every person. Thus, they are observant of the unique identity and needs of individuals, showing honor through simple, loving acts of service.  Kind creatures are not blind creatures. We must see in order to honor.

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor.”

Romans 12: 10

*Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary NT, Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1992.