7 Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor. (Romans 13:7 CSB)

This seems a pretty straight forward piece of scripture. However, respect and honor seem today to be terms of the past.

The idea of respecting and honoring our elders, for instance, seems to be from a bygone era. Even when it comes to how we show honor and respect in what we do and those we work with the bus seems to have left the station.

Our society has become one where honor and respect seem to be optional. We are so focused upon what we think we are owed that we forget that for everthing we think we are owed, someone else is owed that from us. In fact, maybe, just maybe we owe more than we are owed.

We do not pay what we owe then gape in wonder at why we are not given what we believe we deserve. It is a self-deluding trick.

Focus a bit more today on how we show respect and honor and we may just become deserving of the same.