Honoring the gray head

My friend Wendy wrote a wonderful post of ways to really help the older folks around us. I am copying part of it with her permission. Here is what she journaled regarding honoring the elderly:


Here are 10 Tips, or ideas of things which you and your children can do together for an older person to make them feel included, loved, honored, and cared for :

1. Bring homemade food, or order in, and share a meal with them
2. Bring a small child or children to visit them (children make older people smile! but be careful not to tire them out) 
3. Shovel, rake, mow--if they still live in their own home and have to do these things--and take them grocery shopping 
4. Run errands:  for instance, you could pick up their prescriptions for them
5. Play table games together, such as Scrabble, Dominos, or Phase 10 
6. Put a jigsaw puzzle together with them
7. Play instruments or sing for them (ask them what are their favorite "oldies but goodies")
8. Read Scripture to them and/or sing hymns with them:  find out their favorites (they almost certainly know these by heart, so they can sing along) 
9. Invite them to stay at your home for a night or two and/or enlist their help with a project or work at your home: for instance, they can peel potatoes or husk corn on the cob for a meal, or peel and cut up apples for pies, if they are able. 
10. Ask them to tell (or write) a story about their life in the past. Examples: how they celebrated Christmas or Thanksgiving when they were young; their school days; what it was like if they were a school teacher in a one-room schoolhouse; what it was like before telephones, electricity and plumbing; or if they are not related to you, their grandchildren! 
11. Ask/interview them about their growing up, courtship, first job, first apartment or house, or just about "the old days."

(Ok, I gave you one extra for good measure:)  You will want to be ready with a camcorder on the last two ideas, but what a treasure you will have.  Asking about their life and really listening is another way to say, "You are important to me."  Showing love as a family in these ways teaches a child to have a giving heart, to think about someone other than himself, and to obey God's command to "rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man."

I was so delighted with her post. She and her family are living this stuff. That example has been teaching me so much!! Thanks!