Just sharing some of my thoughts I had at Church today.
Charity isn’t Just Doing a Few Nice Things
Parker Schmidt has a companion with whom he didn’t get along very well. So he tried to be charitable. He cooked him breakfast, ironed his shirts, did lots of nice things. But it didn’t seem to really help.
Kevin realized the trouble was that he didn’t really respect his companion, or value his opinion. He didn’t really love him very much because of different opinions.
He also realized that Christ loves us despite he probably has different “opinions” than us.
Love People Where They’re At
Another speaker was brother Slabodan. He told about once he and his daughter had a little fight, and then apologized, and she told him “Don’t worry, you’re still learning to be a good dad.” Which I think is totally true: she was still learning to be a good daughter and citizen, but he was also still learning to be a good father.
He went on to point out how it’s important to be kind to people wherever they’re at. Don’t get immediately frustrated with them or they don’t yet meet your expectation of perfection. Try to help them, but work wit where they’re currently at.
We’re Really Bad at Teaching Important Things
On a related note: I remember once reading about an ironic aspect of parenting: the more imperative we think some behaviour is (eg being polite, doing chores or homework, even saying prayers) the less patient and therefore effective we become at teaching it (eg so instead of listening about why they’re not exhibiting that behaviour, we tell them it’s obligatory, and get immediately frustrated when they don’t meet our expectations for perfection. Our behaviour is most likely to cause resentment and rebellion, not understanding or compliance.
Anyways, that’s it for today!
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