A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
by Fred G. Zaspel
Maybe it’s a reflection of my age, but these two titles have caught my attention. I don’t think I’ve ever seen books given in entirety to address this subject, but now we have two, both from P&R: Kathleen Nielson’s Making Good Return: Biblical Wisdom on Honoring Aging Parents, and William Clifford Davis’s Honoring Dependent Parents: Biblical Decision-Making for Adult Children.
I’ve often been struck with how roles tend to reverse as we age: gradually but certainly parents become dependent on their children. My wife and I are blessed with a son who, along with his wife, honors his parents in our older years with more dedication than I could have expected. We are wonderfully blessed, and so in all honesty, I don’t know if I’ll pass these books along to him or not. Still, this is a much-needed area of attention – for Christians especially (1 Tim. 5:8) – and we wanted to alert our readers to them.
Nielson addresses the matter more broadly, while Davis focuses a bit more narrowly on parents who are more fully dependent, both physically and cognitively. Both titles are important, and both are helpful.
You might want to get a handful of these to supply your church book table.