Eating Our Words & Feeding On Grace

When my first-born child was a toddler her best buddy was the son of one of my to-this-day dearest friends. At the time, my friend was one of onlya few “mommy” friends so our playdates were practically everyday. Swapping babysitting duties for kid-free errand days and date nights was also a regular occurrence. So, I was quite familiar with having a little boy in my house well before ever becoming a boy mom… BUT, not yet being a boy mom myself meant I didn’t have the same grid or experience, which in turn led me to make some very wrong assumptions to which I’ll explain.

You see,this sweet little guy just loved to  knock books off the shelf, pull CDs out of the case, and dump toys out of the baskets, and every time he did I wanted to scream! He must need more discipline because my darling daughter would never do such a thing.

I don’t even have to finish the story because you know what happened… Lo and behold, I had a boy! And as soon as my own son became mobile BIG MESSES HAPPENED ALL THE TIME! Even though we disciplined him in the same way we did our daughter!

Gulp! Talk about EATING MY WORDS!

But having my heart exposed in this way has been one of the greatest things for me. I needed to see my self-righteousness and repent of it. I still do, all the time.

Even as believers our hearts are inclined to sin, and our human defalt mode is one of judgment and condemnation. Just like the Pharisees:

• We judge and compare others based on our own standard of perfection.
• We secretly swell with pride when we think we are performing better and doing more than others. Or, maybe because we look better or have more.
• We think and act like superioir and treat others accordingly

Talk about the shame we heap on to others (I’ve got another post brewing on that one). Yuck!

But guess what?

When I can be this honest about my own sinfulness, I not only see MY need of forgivness, mercy and grace, I become a whole lot more likely to give grace to others. More likely to not view others with a critical eye, but with love and compassion. More likely to not judge, shame, gossip about or act as if I’m the perfect one. When we know our sin and need, it frees us to love our neighbors (this means Everybody) even if we look, act or believe differently.

The thing is at our core, all of humanity is in the same boat – struggling sinners, whether we know it or not.  It is the great equalizer. So by God’s grace may we see ourselves this way.  When we do I think there will be less eating our words less and more feeding on God’s grace together.

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