Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. [James 1:19-21 (MSG)]
Some days, doing “the best we can” may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect – on any front – and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else. [Fred Rogers]
As a teen and young adult, it was easy to be critical of my parents and their parenting. Vowing I’d never say or do some of the things they did, I was sure I’d never make any of their mistakes. Once I became a mother, however, I became far more forgiving and much less judgmental. Turns out, I made some of the same mistakes my parents did (and plenty more of my own).
Parents want to keep their children from heartbreak, disappointment, and harm; they want more and better for their children than they had. As a result, despite their best intentions, they can be over-protective, judgmental, enabling, dictatorial, or stubborn. All things considered, I now realize my parents did the best they could. While they didn’t always make the right decisions, they thought they were the correct ones at the time. It’s only in hindsight that we get twenty-twenty vision!
Most people don’t wake each morning intending to be unforgiving, unsympathetic, intractable, or indifferent. Rather than planning on being selfish, temperamental, hypercritical, or rude, we probably wake up hoping to be kind, patient, and loving. Unfortunately, we’re not always good at doing that! I certainly never begin the day intending to be impatient, inconsiderate, or negative, but that has been known to happen—far more frequently than I’d like. None of us are perfect; being human, we all make plenty of mistakes. My prayer each morning is simple: to be a better person that day than the one I was the day before. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, that is gradually happening.
When we remember that sometimes our best efforts are not nearly good enough, it becomes much easier to forgive others for their failings. Forgiveness doesn’t mean those actions were right or good and it doesn’t mean we approve or accept them. It simply means we forgive them. While we’re forgiving others, we should forgive ourselves for our shortcomings as well. Let’s start the new year by releasing our regrets and resentments and granting grace both to others and ourselves. Every one of us made mistakes and we all could have done better; nevertheless, what’s done is done. If God can forgive us, we ought to be able to do so, too.
Father, replace any hidden resentment, anger, and regret from our hearts with compassion, love, and forgiveness. Help us accept that flaws, both ours and those of others, are part of being human. Show us how to learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. Fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we can be better people today than we were yesterday, and even better ones tomorrow.
Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious. [Phillips Brooks]
Unfortunately, much of our Advent season is not spent joyfully looking forward to celebrating the birth of the Christ child. In hope of finding the perfect gift for everyone on our list, we pore over catalogues and search for sales and coupons. Either we fight for parking spots at the mall and spend hours standing in line or spend those hours sitting at the computer while shopping on line! We then fret and fuss over wrapping those gifts, mailing packages and Christmas cards, hosting and attending parties, baking cookies, making travel arrangements, decorating the house, preparing holiday dinners, and paying the ever-mounting bills. When we say, “Merry Christmas!” we might find ourselves mumbling a Scrooge-like “Bah! Humbug” under our breath! Instead of looking forward to Christmas with anticipation, there are times we can’t wait until it’s all over and done.
Our old friend Joe recently visited. Along with our friend Ric, he and my husband were partners in a manufacturing business in another state many years ago. Once a year, the three men would meet away from the business (with its phone calls and constant interruptions) to discuss their short-term and long-term business goals. While Ric and my husband were the legal, financial, and sales parts of the business, as a processing engineer, Joe oversaw manufacturing.
Making the point that wisdom is better than strength, the sage Agur spoke of the wisdom of ants, locusts, lizards, and sāphān. Often translated as badgers, rock-badgers, hyraxes, conies, or marmots, the animal’s exact identity is unknown but commentators suspect it to be the Syrian rock hyrax. Looking like a cross between a rabbit, guinea pig, and meerkat, these social animals gather in colonies of up to 80 individuals. Sleeping and eating together, they live in the natural crevices of rocks and boulders or take over the abandoned burrows of other animals.
The above words are from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. For Lewis, those first moments of wakefulness were the most important ones of the day because they set one’s frame of mind. When God is our first thought of the day, we begin the morning with a sense of peace and power – peace because we know the day is in His hands and power because we know that through Him we can get through anything it throws at us. It’s as if an invisible barrier has been set up between us and the desires, troubles, and cares of the world in which we live.
Several years ago, I purchased a beautifully drawn coloring book featuring scenes from the Colorado mountain town that had been part of our lives for thirty-five years. Since it was a gift for one of my grands, I asked the artist to sign the book. She added these words to her signature: “Don’t be afraid to color outside the lines!” Was the artist’s advice limited to her book or was it about something more?
Devotions of the Heart 