The Fifth Commandment, The Silence of God
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. The fifth commandment, on face value, seems simple enough. But you will know that nothing, when it come to matters divine and matters human, is simple. Rich. Deep. Mysterious. Complicated. Yes.
Exodus 20: 12 NRSV
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
The honouring of our earthly parents - no matter who they are or what they may have done or not done - is essential to a life well-lived. There is simply no getting around this.
And similarly, the honouring of our heavenly parents - and you may call them God or Allah or Mother and Father or Earth and Sky or whatever you choose - is also of paramount importance if we are to live in any kind of peace in this universe.
Honour stands outside all knowledge and claims faith in the goodness of life
- even though all around us may point to darkness.
This is not naivety.
This is faith.
Psalm 22 - Why Have You Forsaken Me?
It is a truism that there are moments when our human parents have failed us, not been there when we needed them.
And it is true that we have only been greeted by the silence of god when we were most in need of comfort.
Continuing to honour them, never the less, is continuing to honour the life we have been given to live.
For it is by their grace that we do so.
It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of GodIt'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of GodAnd if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes...There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all aloneAnd the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God
“It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart”