Painting with Charitable Judgements

I found this online, and just had to share!

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Pet. 4:8

Ask God to help you make charitable judgments about others. (Charitable simply means “loving.”) Making a charitable judgment means that out of love for God you strive to believe the best about others until you have facts to prove otherwise. In other words, if you can reasonably interpret what someone has said or done in two possible ways, God calls you to embrace the positive interpretation over the negative, or at least to postpone making any judgment at all until you can acquire conclusive facts (see 1 Cor. 13:6; Matt. 7:12; 22:39; James 4:11-12).

Adapted from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflictby Ken Sande
read more from Ken Sande online at: http://www.yorkpca.org/index.php/judging-others-the-danger-of-playing-god

Food For Thought

Observing others' actions is like being handed a tube of oil paint and a brush and then painting their portraits. If an action was offensive to us, our sinful tendency is to use that single incident's "color" to paint an entire portrait of their character. We may do this because we don't know that person well enough to have many other colors and brush sizes, but it is more likely we generalize such incidents to cover their whole character in order to justify keeping them at a distance. Is that how you want others to paint your portrait?

Let me suggest three alternatives.

Neutral – Admit your ignorance of that person's character and leave parts of the portrait blank.

Positive – Recall the good you know about that person so that your portrait of him or her will be more accurate.

Gracious – Trust God that he is at work in that person. Fill in the blank part of others' portraits with God's good intentions for them. Even more, go one step further and paint over the real smudges and blemishes with the colors of grace.

~Scott HaydenBangkok, Thailand

Gratitude Continued

i have a new goal. I haven't figured out how to link to it, but there is a circle of bloggers who are aiming to reach 1,000 things to be thankful for, so I am going to cumulatively count my thanksgivings. I know what you're thinking..."Better you than me" :)



6. in honor of my last post, i am thankful for my curly-ish hair ;) i don't always give in to the curliness, but i love that i have the option.

7. i am grateful for my friday night Bible study circle of friends. really, they are so much more than that. how can you limit a group of friends to one time slot, lol. i can't. these are my core group of friends that i know that, no matter what, they care about me for who i am, strengths and weaknesses and all, and it is such a joy to be a part of their lives.

8. i'm grateful for my hubby, who works hard to provide for our family, and that he doesn't make me feel bad about it in order to make himself feel better.

9. i'm thankful for the opportunity to play tennis with my son. even if the ball rarely makes it back over the net. (stop laughing!) hopefully when he is famous one day he'll credit me with having pointed him the the right direction. haha.

10. i'm thankful for the free swimming i'll get to do at the ymca this week, just because of where i work. what a cool perk to have this week, and a great way to end the summer with my kids.

A Good Hair Day

i must share. my daughter is actually the one who called me out on the carpet tonight. actually, it's a good thing. It means that something is sinking in, lol. And i appreciate that i can take pointers from her, not just vice versa.

I was fussing in the mirror over my new haircut, a bit disgruntled that the newly added layers had robbed me of my ability to easily straighten my naturally wavy/curly hair.

She reminded me of this really cute, challenging, (totally unrealistic) but inspiring story that speaks of the power of attitude.

here goes:

There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and
noticed she had only three hairs on her head.

"Well," she said, "I
think I'll braid my hair today." So she did and she had a wonderful day.

The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw that she had
only two hairs on her head.

"Hmm," she said, "I think I'll part my
hair down the middle today." So she did and she had a grand day.

The
next day she woke up, looked in the mirror, and noticed that she had only one
hair on her head.

"Well," she said, "today I'm going to wear my
hair in a pony tail." So she did and she had a fun, fun day.

The next day
she woke up, looked in the mirror, and noticed that there wasn't a single hair
on her head.

"Yah!" she exclaimed. "I don't have to fix my hair
today!"

Attitude is everything. (Author Unknown)

I can't imagine attaining quite THAT attitude in that situation (that is SO
not my idea of a "fun, fun day", but it reminded me that i have much to be thankful for. After all, how many people have you heard wish for a head of naturally curly hair?!!!!