Recently I read a post by Max Lucado which struck me… “Worry is falling short on faith. Impatience is falling short on kindness. The critical spirit falls short on love.” This says quite loudly, faith, kindness, love is hampered by worry, impatience, and a critical spirit. So when you look at your life and behavior where do you fall on these three continuum’s? For me it’s a sliding scale on all 3 – sometimes I’m far more on one end of the continuum than the others. However, I’ve also discovered that if 1 in this trio is up (or down) the other 2 typically are as well.
So… how do we shore up? How do we stay on the positive side of these three continuum’s? Is one easier to develop than the others? Doubtful. However… scripture tells us that faith works through love which implies an extremely strong relationship between the two. Another scripture tells us that… the greatest is love. Kindness, in my world of definitions is an observable act. You can’t ‘think’ kindness, you have to act kind. All in all… an impossibility to start from the end: faith, kindness, love.
Should we begin by considering worry, impatience, critical spirit? Or do we run into the same problems? All three can be seen as operating in others – we all know when we observe these behaviors in others by their words or actions. And all three are typically self defeating. So, perhaps what we need to consider is… what is ‘falling short’? Is that a universal place or individually defined? Personally, I think the latter focus is correct.
Falling short is not a permanent place – we can all self correct. We can grow. We can improve. We can take a stand against worry – which really accomplishes nothing since it really isn’t an fact. And we can take a stand against impatience. This requires that we stop this behavior when it begins to emerge. And we can definitely determine not to be critical. A critical spirit is typically a judgmental person – someone attempting to force their standards on others. As a result – we determine to NOT worry, be impatient, or be critical. As we work on us we will find that falling short begins to abate.
…but, what do you think?
