Well, hello there, my friend!
Raise your hand if you’re still eating Thanksgiving leftovers! (Me with my hand in the air.) Our fridge is still full. My belly is full. My heart is full. It was a week of wonderful, crazy chaos under the Thomas’s roof. I hope you were able to enjoy the holiday as well.
And now we’re off to the Christmas races!
No. Nope. No way. No races this year, please! Just peace and Silent Night and Away in a Manger for me, thank you very much. Oh, you can throw in a bit of Joy to the World, but keep it down, will you??
I’ve been chewing on a Bible verse I read a couple of weeks ago. I’ve read it repeatedly, and you know how sometimes you can read a verse and sort of go, (yawn) “Yeah, OK.” And then you read the same verse sometime later and say, “Wow!! What?? Are you serious? Huh! I can’t believe I never saw it that way before!” I think sometimes God reaches down with an inflatable hammer and (gently) knocks me on the head when He’s trying to tell me something.
These are the verses I read: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4) I added the italics myself because that’s the part that gets me every time. It’s so not—normal.
I love a couple of other ways different translations say these verses. They seem to get more “real” with each one. The New Living Translation Bible says: “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” But wait, there’s more!
This is from The Message: “Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”
What?? Don’t push my way to the front? Don’t obsess over getting my own advantage? But that’s not the American way!
I’ve been trying to do this in practical ways lately. Like, how do I show someone I’m “regarding them more highly than I’m regarding myself?” During the course of one of my ordinary days, I’m not coming across any extraordinary circumstances in which to show my valor. I’m not a firefighter risking my life to save someone from a burning building. I’m not an ER doctor putting people back together after traumatizing circumstances. I’m not assisting the Royal Family in England, in which case I’d be bowing here and bowing there. Here a bow, there a bow, everywhere a bow-bow. I’m doing pretty mundane things, like going to Publix. Picking up the dry-cleaning. Whoop-dee-do.
But it doesn’t say that this is a way that only certain people should behave. The chapter starts by saying, “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit . . . then act like this:” (I summarized at the end there.) So, I guess when I take my boring old butt to Publix, I need to, as Aretha Franklin might say, show “a little respect!”
If I’m about to enter the door simultaneously with someone else, let them go first. Or if I’m in first, hold the door for them as I enter. Can I tell you that the mere act of letting someone else “go first” is huge? Don’t we all want to go first? Ever since we were in kindergarten, we wanted to be first in line! And don’t even get me started about what happens to us when we get behind the wheel of a car! I’m not saying any of this because I’ve got it “down.” I’m saying it because I need HAAAALLP!!!
Perhaps the most challenging time for me to be all “you-go-first-ish” is when someone is hogging the aisle at a grocery store. (You must think I spend my whole life in Publix. I kind of do.) I don’t understand why someone would leave their cart in the MIDDLE of the aisle when it has obviously been built for two-way traffic. You’re on one side or the other, people! Now, if I approach said aisle hog and smile and say, “Excuse me,” and I’m met with a huff and a jerk of their cart to the side, as though I’d just asked them to move the Empire State Building out of my way, all my Ms. Nicey Nice wants to go straight out the nearest window. I can think of plenty of things I’d like to say, but I bite my tongue and continue to Frozen Foods and try to, in the wise words of Taylor Swift, Shake it Off.
It’s not just aisle hogs that bother me. What about people who don’t think the same as I do politically?
“ . . . consider others better than yourself.”
What about people who don’t look like me?
“ . . . consider others better than yourself.”
What about if people don’t act very nice to me?
“ . . . consider others better than yourself.”
Left to my own devices, I will fail at this big time. I’m thankful for that inflatable hammer in God’s loving hands to tenderly get my attention.
Maybe as the holidays approach, we can be on the lookout for those who seem to need a little extra “regarding.” You never know when a well-timed smile or a “You go first” will turn someone’s day around.
Do you have a hard time letting some people go first? Tell me about it!
Have a wonderful week as we bid adieu to sweet November!
Written with love – – – Patti 💗☀