Article March 31, 1980 Issue

To be respected

EDWIN G. LEEVER

Everybody wants to be respected—from the small child throwing a tantrum to the older person looking back over his life. But do we always look in the right place? Respect isn't something we get from others. Or from things or events. Essentially, it's something to be recognized not about ourselves but within ourselves.

One dictionary defines "respect" as "to feel or show honor or esteem for; hold in high regard." What are we putting first in our lives? Where is God in our priorities? We can't afford to be so concerned with worldly position and material possessions that we fail to honor God as we should. We can't afford to let the value we put on someone else's human opinion of us obscure our looking deeply enough at the real man.

As we really honor God, and man as God, Spirit, has made him, we see what respect really is. We feel it. We love it. We express it. And our whole life and life style change. Many things that before seemed so important take a secondary place. We experience an inner peace we never knew before. We look for opportunities to express more of God in everything we do, to everyone we meet.

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