Ever had one? You know the type of day I’m talking about. One of those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days? The pipes are frozen; the car won’t start and some screw-up at the bank is keeping you from your own money. I’m not having one of those days, but I have had them before and will almost certainly have some again. My failure, I fear, is that when I’m not having one of those days I tend to forget that others might be right in the midst of one of those days.
When it’s someone we love, someone open enough to share their troubles, compassion isn’t hard to find. When it’s someone we don’t know well, and someone understandably reluctant to let his or her guard down we are more prone to add to the burden by getting annoyed by however the other person’s bad day manifests in our day. Maybe they respond to their day with a harsh tongue, or a slothful demeanor, or confusion and distraction.
What should we do? We should respond as we would want others to respond when we’re having one of those days. There’s nothing especially difficult to understand about this. It is, however, difficult to practice. Because we think ourselves to be more important that others. Our hardships are harder, because we deserve so much better. We are due special consideration from those having bad days, because of our exalted status. These internal mindsets make of us little more than one more bad part of this person’s bad day.
Kindness is the order of those kinds of days. As we come to understand that we who are in Christ already have more than we could ever ask or imagine, we no longer look at our encounters with others as a tug-of-war wherein each side seeks to get the best of the other. Instead we see opportunities to give and to share. We share out of the overflowing abundance of the grace that we have received. We live in peace, having been given peace with our Father, and so pass the peace on to others.
How pathetic that we even look at our sound doctrine as just another tug-of-war weapon. Whether we are stuck in the cage stage or simply ornery, too many of us study theology in order to win theological debates. What we ought to be seeking in our studies is instead a changed heart, a deeper faith that believes more fully in the fullness of His promises. Affirming God’s sovereignty does so much more than demonstrate our straight thinking. It allows us to rest, to rejoice, even to see our own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days for what they are, tools in His sovereign hands to remake us into the blessed image of His Son.
We need to hang in there, while encouraging our brothers in Christ to do the same. We need more smiles, more understanding, more encouragement, more faith. May God in His grace pour such out on us all.
Amen!