I Honored Every Old Face But Mine

There were four old women in the house I grew up in and every one of them was beautiful, and I do not mean that in a soft way.

I mean that when they came into a room, the room adjusted. Somebody stood up. Somebody moved a chair. The conversation went quieter and better. And their faces, which were seventy and eighty years old and looked it, carried more authority than anything else in that house.

Nobody would have said, poor thing, she has aged. It would have made no sense. It would have been like saying a book had too many pages. Those women got care from everybody in that house and they had earned every bit of it.

You have women like that. Everybody does. A grandmother, an aunt, a woman at church, somebody's mother who was kind to you at fifteen. And you look at their faces with something close to reverence, and you always have, and it costs you no effort at all.

And then you look at your own at fifty and something entirely different happens.

That is not a small inconsistency. It is the same woman, in the same day, applying two opposite readings to the same phenomenon, and never once noticing that they cannot both be right.

An honor with one exception in it

Here is what I would like laid out plainly.

There is a thing you do automatically, all your life, and you do it well. You honor older faces. You do not have to work at it, it is not a discipline, and if somebody thanked you for it you would not know what they meant.

And there is exactly one face on earth that the honoring does not reach.

You are the one face left off a list you wrote yourself, and there has never once been a clause in that command excluding you from it. Leviticus 19 says thou shalt honor the face of the old man, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a woman back into her own instruction.

That is not a general problem with how you see aging. If it were, you would look at your aunt at seventy eight and see decline, and you do not. You see her.

So the reading is not the issue. The reading is fine. The reading works everywhere except in one bathroom.

You are running a good reading everywhere except on one face, and there has never once been a rule that made yours the exception. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman a rule she never agreed to, and Leviticus 19 gives a command about old faces that does not carve anybody out.

Now, the obvious objection, and it deserves an answer.

Somebody will say that honoring another woman's face is easy because nobody has to live inside it. And that is true and it is not the whole truth.

Because what you honor in those women is not the surface. It is the life visible in it. You look at a face like that and you see decades, weathered and kept, and a person who is still here and still herself, and the honoring is a response to all of that.

Every single one of those things is true of your own face, and none of them require any distance to be true.

You are looking at the same evidence and refusing the same conclusion, and the distance has never once been what made the honoring possible. Scripture in Leviticus 19 commands honor for the old face and never once names an exemption, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a woman inside a command she has kept for everybody else.

Rise up before the hoary head

There is a command in Leviticus that is very short and physically specific.

Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:32, King James Version)

Look at what is actually being asked.

Rise up. Stand when they come in. That is a bodily act, not a feeling, and it is required regardless of the state of anybody's heart on the day.

And then, honor the face. Not the wisdom, not the years in the abstract. The face. The command lands specifically on the thing the world says is the problem.

This is worth sitting with, because it is a strange place for a command to land. God commands honor for the exact feature that everything around you treats as a decline. Not tolerance. Not kindness. Honor, which is what you give to something of high standing.

You are looking at a feature God commanded honor for, and there has never once been a text anywhere that called it a decline. It is written in Leviticus 19 that we rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman receive a command she has only ever obeyed on behalf of others.

And note the last clause. I am the LORD.

That is how these commands close when the reason is God Himself rather than any practical consideration. Not because it works out well. Not because old people appreciate it. Because of who He is.

Which means honoring an old face is not a social courtesy that could be argued about. It is a response to God, and it does not stop having that character when the face in question is the one in your own bathroom.

You are giving an honor that answers to God rather than to a room, and it has never once been a courtesy that could take an exception. The Spirit of God is what turns an obedience outward into an obedience at home, and the written word says honor the face of the old and fear thy God.

One thing you honor, out loud

So here is the assignment, and it uses a muscle you already have.

Say out loud one thing you honor about your own face at the age it is now.

Honor, not like. Those are two different words and the distinction is the whole exercise. Liking is about taste and you cannot argue yourself into it. Honoring is about standing, and it can be done on purpose, tonight, in a bathroom, whatever you happen to feel.

You are able to honor a face tonight without liking it first, and standing has never once waited on taste. It is written in Leviticus 19 that you shall honor the face of the old man, and the Spirit of God is what lets a woman act on standing rather than on feeling.

Something like: this face has been through two hard decades and it is still here. Or: these are the eyes that watched my children grow and they did not miss anything. Or: this is the face my grandmother had and I honored hers.

Say it once, out loud, and then leave.

Do not check whether you believe it. Belief is not the assignment. Honor is an act rather than a sentiment, which is exactly why the command is to rise up, which is something a body does.

You are able to perform an honor that does not wait on a feeling, and rising up has never once required anybody to feel a particular way first. The written word in Leviticus 19 commands a physical act toward an old face, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one sentence in a bathroom into care rather than performance.