Happy Saturday!
If you made it through this week, and you felt the tugs. Me too.
This one was close to home, and I mean that literally. “Don’t take it out on them” isn’t an abstract concept for me. I know the move where the bad meeting comes home in the passenger seat. I know what it looks like to sit at the dinner table carrying something I can’t name out loud and watch my wife read the room and quietly adjust herself to my mood, because she’s gotten very good at it over nearly thirty years. She’s gracious that way. That doesn’t make it right.
What I kept coming back to this week was Harold. Sick, limited, humbled by his own body in ways most of us can’t imagine, and he does the one small thing that costs him his pride and covers his wife. Before she wakes up. Without making a speech about it.
That’s love without anything left to perform it with. Just the one small action that’s been withheld, offered quietly to the person who has been carrying more than they should. No audience. No credit. Dorothy came downstairs and held his hand. That was the whole thing.
Proverbs 24:16 says the righteous man falls seven times and gets back up. Not that he never falls. Not that he’s got it figured out. That he gets up. Every time. God doesn’t demand perfection from us; He loves our progress. He loves watching His kids choose differently this time, even after a week of not getting it right.
“When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!'”
So if this week you matched the temperature of the house instead of changing it, get up. If you said sorry again without changing anything behind it, get up. If you carried something alone that your wife was right there to carry with you, get up. Go home. Put the phone down. Ask for ten minutes. Open the box.
The person who needs you most isn’t at the office. They’re in the next room. And you still have tonight.
See it from God’s seat. The people standing closest to you are the ones He gave you to cover. Stay in step with the Spirit.
— Lance
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