The teachers and mentors I had - the best ones - never dragged me towards my better self. Sure, they may have had to get my attention first (easy enough to do with a people pleaser; just suggest you are not pleasing them) - but once they did, they lead by example of being a better person and encouraging me to be a better person based on their example. And that I can remember, after that initial shock to get my attention, they never again became cross or angry.
Leading by example is always the higher road.
"Love does not know how to lose it's temper." That is a full sermon in few words. Definitely worth the price of admission. I will unashamedly borrow that.
ReplyDeleteSTxAR, one of the great things about expanding my reading a bit is that there is literally an entire corpus of Christian writing out there waiting to be discovered.
DeleteThat is advice that's good when there's good left to be found.
ReplyDeleteTrue, John. I suppose, at least for me, God's patience for any good in me gives me hope for others. I am struggling to think of the reference - maybe C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce - where the narrator says that if the smallest iota of good is in a soul, Heaven will do all within its power to blow it into flame.
DeleteWHAT DOES THAT OLD GOAT KNOW!? Oh, wisdom...oh yeah. Thanks for the reminder. These days, I sometimes need remedial, continuing, education.
ReplyDeleteHeh heh. You and me both T_M, you and me both.
DeleteI think there is something in this for me to apply. Not quite in the way you have applied it, TB, but still... love is always the way. Says me with a sigh of "not feeling it".
ReplyDeleteBecki, if there is a fault it is likely my own. Sometimes I suspect I miss the thrust of the greats in my interpretations.
DeleteT_M - Nope. The comment was completely off topic and I have moved it to spam. Mixing a 7th Century A.D. saint and modern theories completely misses the thrust of his quote.
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