If only the children could see that command as an opportunity and not just a duty…
What a blessing for the whole world if all of us could view the empty minds and bodies as you have described. Serving the elderly would not be a burden but a joy.
Imagine the gripping photo above with flowers planted around the house and children playing nearby. Would the feeling be different? Perhaps the worst tragedy is our selfish abandonment.
After regularly visiting my mother-in-law in the nursing home for the entire eight year course of her severe dementia, I learned a valuable lesson: even when a person has lost all ability to speak or apparently to think normally, there’s something inside each of us, some indescribable spark beyond conscious thought, that is left of who we really are. Is it our soul? No matter how debilitated a shell of their former self a person may be, none of us loses the need to be loved. We owe it to our loved ones (or aunt, or stranger as the case may be! 1 Tim 5:3, Mt 25:31-46) to requite them the good they have done for us, to care for them, to keep them a part of our lives. It’s a command of God that we honor our father and mother. There’s no time limit on that. And honor, like love, demands more than lip service.
1John 3:18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
Deut 5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Ezek 22:7 In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.
Jas 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
MULIEBRAL VIEWPOINT 
If only the children could see that command as an opportunity and not just a duty…
What a blessing for the whole world if all of us could view the empty minds and bodies as you have described. Serving the elderly would not be a burden but a joy.
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Imagine the gripping photo above with flowers planted around the house and children playing nearby. Would the feeling be different? Perhaps the worst tragedy is our selfish abandonment.
After regularly visiting my mother-in-law in the nursing home for the entire eight year course of her severe dementia, I learned a valuable lesson: even when a person has lost all ability to speak or apparently to think normally, there’s something inside each of us, some indescribable spark beyond conscious thought, that is left of who we really are. Is it our soul? No matter how debilitated a shell of their former self a person may be, none of us loses the need to be loved. We owe it to our loved ones (or aunt, or stranger as the case may be! 1 Tim 5:3, Mt 25:31-46) to requite them the good they have done for us, to care for them, to keep them a part of our lives. It’s a command of God that we honor our father and mother. There’s no time limit on that. And honor, like love, demands more than lip service.
1John 3:18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
Deut 5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Ezek 22:7 In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.
Jas 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
LikeLiked by 2 people