The In-Laws & Older People in General

Okay, so I'm not married, but we all know the stereotypical views of "in-laws." I personally hate them. Right now I have great in-laws (bro-in-law & sis-in-law). We'll see how that ends up working out when I do get married, but for now, I still hate the stereotype.

As you know, I'm reading through the Bible in a year. This morning I read a selection from Exodus 17 & 18 that really impressed me. It had to do with in-laws. Moses, the great leader of the children of Israel, every day was taking on the great task of sitting down while the people brought concerns/arguments/squabbles, whatever. He probably heard silly squabbles over whose basket belonged to who and maybe even judged a few life & death issues.

Then, one day, Father-In-Law Jethro comes along. Ol' Jeb is spending the day with Moses and he, too, has to sit through the boring dragging task of doing the judging. He looks and thinks, this is ridiculous! So, he tells Moses. Now Moses at this point has 2 options.

1) Get offended because the father-in-law is basically saying that he isn't doing a good enough job at judging, interefering with Moses' business, and just being downright mean. He can storm off. He can not speak to the father-in-law. This would prove pointless. Miriam would be upset with him FOREVER, Jethro wouldn't be too happy, and Marge & Sally wouldn't know whose bowl actually belonged to whom once it fell over the property line.

2) Listen to Jethro. Jethro is an older man. Believe it or not, this old guy's got some wisdom. And it's good, too!

Thankfully, Moses takes the high road and listens to old Daddy-Jeb. He sets up a judicial system (the first of its kind probably!). Leaders of 50, 100, 1000, and so on. The hard cases got brought to Moses but the ones over baskets and property lines went to the smaller judges.

I guess my point is, every older person has wisdom. Maybe they can't give you good advice as to what to do, but they can give you advice as to what not to do. Listen to them. See if what they say is worth it. Moses did and look, where it got him!