As you go into the holidays with warm family, special friends, and loving neighbors— do make it a priority to generously extend the benefit of the doubt in all conversations. Even where relationships perhaps are broken or strained. You will be softer for it, and as you endure hardships (or even a hard conversation) and yet respond with tenderness and compassion, you look closer to Jesus.
So in preparing for the table talk and couch conversing, look to Jesus.
➳Recount the love, the bond you share with the people around your table.
➳Remember their intent is not to maliciously attack your heart with the words they say.
➳Guard your heart of bitterness from unmet expectations among circumstances and responses.
➳Diligently watch your heart from the creeping anger in their lack of understanding.
➳Give yourself over to gentleness in your responses and wear kindness on your face.
➳Remind yourself that you have nothing to prove if you are in Christ.
➳Run to the suffering Savior who perfectly understands whatever darkness that looms over your head.
➳Rejoice and give thanks for what the Lord has provided, what he has graciously given.
➳Plead with the only Giver who can hear your pleas, move and change circumstances, and give joy while you wait.
➳And thank our good, good Father for his faithfulness to us knowing that wherever we might be, he has ordained, purposed, meant.
Whether it’s persecution or pain, work or weariness, heartbreak or a hollowness, a diagnosis or doubt, loss or lack; the Lord has not forgotten you.
So when curiosity and wondering arise, when conversation moves into murky and uneasy territory—with joy and pain mixed into one—by extending the benefit of the doubt you will coat your heart in gratitude and protect yourself from a pointed distrust and palpable hate in your heart for others, and for the Lord. The Lord is so near. The Lord is so good. And the Lord does and will do all that pleases him for his glory.
Look to Jesus.
Look to Jesus.
Look to Jesus.
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