Philemon 7
We all want to be on the receiving end of encouragement.
Oh my, isn\’t that the truth?
But how much encouragement do we give?
In the Philemon story, discouraging others was a crime.
A crime!
If I were to tell the truth, I\’d have to say that I would be on the receiving end of justice more often than not for my lack of encouragement to others. Chances are strong that I\’ve used words or body language toward someone else that they interpreted as my being a discouragement.
In some of the diversity and multiculturalism courses I teach, I share a story I heard many years back. The student, who was the only member of a particular background in a class, felt offense about something that had been said about people of that background. When she brought the issue to the faculty member, he tried to say that the other student didn\’t mean anything by it. The student who had felt the offense replied with something like, \’It isn\’t how [the other student] meant it, it\’s how it made me feel\’.
We don\’t always mean to offend someone (and sometimes we do), but our words or actions might come across to them.
Yeah. That …
Yep, sometimes what we do – even with the best of intentions – can make a person feel bad. It happened to me and my friend. She was renting a granny flat from a church organisation, and the electrical wiring was faulty (power outlets hanging off the wall above the kitchen sink.) I told the business manager they need to fix it. Well, my friend thought I’d done it deliberately to embarrass her, when I actually did it to stop her from being electrocuted. I apologised for making her feel bad, even though that certainly wasn’t my intention. The thing is, my actions did make her feel bad, so my only option was to tell her I was sorry. LOL we’re still friends (40 years now) – we had lunch together at my place after church today (today is Sunday in Australia) 🙂 <3
It is interesting, isn’t it … the whole how we interpret the actions of others. I am glad to hear that the two of you are still well-connected!