Day 27 - Issue 27
Ephesians 4:1-2 NLT
'Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.'
It is said that our actions speak louder than our words. Christian fruit is evident in the actions we take. Of course, all such actions are birthed from our understanding and attitude, so it’s essential to reflect upon our actions, both their source and consequences.
I’m no DIY expert, and in fact gain virtually no enjoyment from DIY tasks. They increase my stress levels. We recently took delivery of some vegetable troughs that needed assembling. One look at the instructions and I felt my heart rate increase. I was defeated before I started. In voicing my confusion, I offloaded my stress onto Jayne and the tension grew. Fortunately she is methodical and excellent at mapping a task from start to finish. She’s also visual and so the instructions were not the mystery to her that they were for me. Her gentle leadership in the task enabled us to complete the project with ease, albeit with some head-scratching along the way.
In this situation, Jayne demonstrated an essential strand of gentleness, empathy. She was prepared to accept my DIY default, and treat me with a gentleness I did not deserve. She chose not to react to my reaction, but gently work with me both to manage that reaction and effectively deploy my muscle to get the trough built. For my part, I again observed how deeply encoded is my default drive, and was left to reflect on: what does it take to disempower that default setting? The fact that together we navigated our way through the task and my reaction never got out of control is perhaps clear evidence that I am making progress, progress encouraged through Jayne’s gentleness of approach.
QUESTION: What are some negative default reactions that you have?
PRAYER: Gracious God, give me the humility to make allowances for other’s faults as others make allowances for mine.
