When Our Words Unintentionally Cause Hurt

 Have you ever said nothing you meant nothing by without realizing how much it was going to hurt someone when you didn't intend to?

We've all probably done this sometimes. And we've probably been on the receiving end of a comment like this.

A situation where there's truly no ill will or ill intent, yet was is said causes pain for someone. These times are not fun for anyone involved as the outcome is fully realized.

Despite our best intentions, we hurt each other sometimes. We do it in all kinds of situations. But today, I want to talk about one specific time that we it happens, that is causing more harm than we may be aware of.

If you're a single adult in the church, you've likely smiled, or even laughed, outwardly in these situations. All the while cringing and feeling less than on the inside, as you've heard people say things like what follows here:

I don't know why someone like you is still single.

Maybe if you didn't desire marriage anymore, you'd meet someone.

You're too ______________ (confident, established, sure of yourself) for someone to want to be with you. You need to need someone.

You just need to trust God with your plans for your life.

The Bible says God will give you the desires of your heart, so just wait for His timing and it will happen.

There must be something in your life that is keeping you from finding someone. You need to deal with it, so you can meet someone.

Singleness is a gift. You should embrace it and stop desiring marriage.

Sorry. You won't understand this part of the conversation because you're not married.

And that's far from an exhaustive list of things I've heard over the years of being single, but it's a start to get us thinking.

Because the troubling Scripture interpretation and faulty logic of some of those statements, they also bring a lot of pain.

Many of these statements make assumptions about the experiences of someone.

Many of these statements make assumptions about where the heart of someone is.

Many of these statements make assumptions about the single person is doing or not doing.

And it hurts. 

Even if it was intended differently, it doesn't remove the fact that the words hurt.

So, how should we respond if the person who was hurt has the courage to tell us that our words hurt them?

I think this is where the biggest impact lies. When we're made aware that something we said caused pain to another, even when that's not what we intended, our response can change the entire experience for the person who spoke up.

We can acknowledge how they feel and seek to understand.

Or we can make light of it and contribute to causing greater hurt.

To acknowledge that our words hurt someone requires humility on our part. We have to be willing to admit and own the pain our words caused to the other person.

This applies in so many areas of life, but as you can probably guess from above, I'm talking specifically about how we respond to the single adults around us. Because we how respond to them, is vital to the church functioning as the family God created the church to be.

"It's a Lot of Rain in One Place"

 "It's a lot of rain in one place"

Those are the words of a character on a show I was watching. They were using them to describe their situation. In that episode, there had been a series of losses to death of people in this character's world in pretty rapid succession. They were wrestling with the weight of it all.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

I had almost turned off that episode a few times, as it was hitting on my own grief over the many of losses to death - of family members and people at work - that 2021 had brought. I wasn't sure I could handle watching a show about that. But, for whatever reason, I kept watching. When I got to the end, I was glad I had.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

Those words resonated. They gave me way to describe what a series of losses of any kind coming one after another felt like. It put words, in a simple way, to the journey I've been walking. And then gave some insight into what it takes to get through these times.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

The impact of each loss is like a rainstorm over you - a downpour. It soaks you and it soaks the ground. Nothing about it is pleasant, but it passes eventually and things dry out again.

But sometimes another downpour comes before things have dried out from the last one. The already soaked ground becomes saturated - muddy and sticky. Your already wet clothing soaks up more water and starts becoming cold and heavy.

As the rainstorms keep coming, everything gets more soaked. The ground is a muddy, sticky mess that sucks you in. Instead of keeping you warm and dry, your soaked clothes stick tightly to you, feeling cold, heavy, and restrictive.

Eventually, you realize your stuck. The ground too muddy and sticky for you to get your feet to move by yourself. Any attempt to do so just sucks you deeper in. Clothes stuck to you with water - feeling heavy and restrictive.

You only have one choice at this point. You have to ask for help. You need some people who aren't stuck in the mud to help pull you out. People standing on solid ground who you grab hold of and who grab hold of you to pull you out.

But that's not the only help you need. Once you're unstuck from the mud, those soaked clothes need to be removed and replaced with dry ones. But when they're clinging to you so tightly, restricting your movement, you can't do it yourself. You have to allow others to help you do this.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

Asking for help isn't something we're taught to be good at in our society. Being able to do it all by yourself is praised and held up as the goal we should be working towards.

I think there are different types of help we need to ask for and some are easier to ask for than others.

Asking for help to get your feet unstuck? Not easy, but probably something we'll eventually be will to do when we really need help.

But, how many times do we ask for help beyond that? Not very often. 

Once we're unstuck, we go back to trying to do it all on our own again. We've determined we're going to figure out how to remove those soaked clothes ourselves. And sometimes we might succeed, but we're exhausted and defeated by the time we do. Often, we find out we're unable to do it ourselves.

Why do we do this? Why do we fight the help we know deep inside we need?

It's because once we're unstuck, we don't want to let anyone see what comes next. To admit we still need help means letting a least one person into places we usually hide from others. It gets close. It gets personal. It's vulnerable. It's scary.

But, it's necessary. It's how we get those soaked clothes removed and dry ones in place, without exhausting and defeating ourselves in the process. It's how we learn to live with the losses we've experienced.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

I don't know what your "a lot of rain in one place" has been. But, my guess is that after the last few years in our world, you have that place. That place where you feel stuck in the mud and took heavy and restricted by the weight of your soaked clothes to move. The intensity will be different for all of us. And the help we need to ask for will be different for all of us.

But, if there's something I've learned in the last few months: asking for help is the best thing we can do. It's not a weakness. It's not a sign something is wrong with us. It's the absolute best thing we can. Even if we do it shaking and terrified, it's the way forward in our "a lot of rain in one place."

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

But we don't have to figure it all out alone. We can ask for help.

"It's a lot of rain in one place"

What is your "a lot of rain in one place"?

Who can you ask for the help you need? Family? Friends? Church? A counsellor?

A Baby Who Changed the World

As Christmas approaches, I keep being drawn back to a post I wrote in 2014. As I've thought about what I might write to share here as I look towards Christmas, I've realized that those words from then are where my heart is at again this year. Rather than write something new, I'm choosing to share those words from four years ago again.

My prayer is they make you think, reflect, wonder at Christmas this year...

_______________________________

As I have been reflecting on the Christmas story this year, I've been struck by how life changing the birth of this one baby was for all people - the night it happened and for all eternity.

One baby changed the world forever. 

Nothing has been the same since that night.

We often talk about how a baby changes everything for the family that baby is born into.

 None brought so much change as Jesus when He was born.

God come to earth.

Immanuel.

God with us.

The One whose life, death, and resurrection would make a way for mankind to once again have direct access to God.

The ultimate expression of sacrificial love. Of humble service.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph, if the shepherds, if the Magi, really understood the significance of that night. They knew what the angels had told them about this baby, but did they really get it? 

A couple thousand years later, do we really get it? Will we ever really get it?

The birth of a baby, named Jesus. 

A baby Who would change everything through His life and death.

The promised Messiah. The One prophesied about.

The One missed by so many when He came because of the way He came.

The One missed by so many while He walked on earth because He came to serve, not to exert His power.

The One missed by so many because He dies a criminal's death to become the greatest sacrifice and defeat sin and death for good.

The One still missed by many today.

But for those who stop to notice . . .

for those who are searching for something more . . .

for those who are willing to be humble and serve . . .

the chance to meat the One Who changes everything.

The One Who offers hope.

The One Who offers forgiveness and a second chance.

The One Who offers unconditional love.

The One Who never fails.

It was one night . . . 

in a stable . . .

in a small town . . .

with two poor parents . . .

surrounded by animals . . .

where the world changed forever.

God put His plan in motion to redeem a fallen world,

to restore a broken relationship with His people.

A plan still in motion today.

A plan that still offers hope today.

A birth.

A baby.

A life lived.

A death.

And the greatest of all - a victory over death, a resurrection.

All because of God's vast, unmeasurable, unchanging, unfailing love for each of us.

That makes it something worth celebrating!

The Marks of a Follower of God

As a kid at summer camp, we used to sing a lot of songs that were passages of Scripture.One these songs came from Micah 6:8, which says,

          "He has shown you, O Man, what is good.
               And what does the Lord require of you?
         To act justly and to love mercy
               and to walk humbly with your God."

Every time I read that verse, the song from summer camp starts in my head again. It's definitely helped me to remember this one.

When I read this verse in Micah recently, I started thinking about what it says. Thirty-one words that contain some simple truths about how we should live as Christians today. Three phrases that define what we should be about.

Act justly.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly with God.

Much of the detail of what we do flows out of these three things. No, they're not exhaustive, but if we did these three things, we'd be living lives that were in greater alignment with the life Jesus calls His followers to, than if we're always trying to do it on our own.


Act Justly

We live in a world filled with injustice, but in the midst of it we're told to act justly. If we want to change the injustices of our world, it begins with us and with the things we do everyday.

We should be fair and honest in all our interactions. We should be willing to speak up on behalf of those being treated unjustly, who often cannot speak for themselves.


Love Mercy

Mercy means that we haven't received what we deserved for what we did. Jesus showed us mercy when He took the punishment for our sin instead of us.

It's pretty easy to love mercy when we're on the receiving end of it. But, that's only a partial picture of what it means to love mercy. When we love mercy, we also show it to others. As we have received mercy, we need to give it to others.


Walk Humbly with God

We need to follow where God leads us. That means we need to have the humility to admit we don't know it all ourselves. We have to admit that God knows best and following Him is our best choice.

One Night that Changed the World

As I have been reflecting on the Christmas story this year, I've been struck by how life changing the birth of this one baby was for all people - the night it happened and for all eternity.

One baby changed the world forever. 

Nothing has been the same since that night.

We often talk about how a baby changes everything for the family that baby is born into.

 None brought so much change as Jesus when He was born.

God come to earth.

Immanuel.

God with us.

The One whose life, death, and resurrection would make a way for mankind to once again have direct access to God.

The ultimate expression of sacrificial love. Of humble service.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph, if the shepherds, if the Magi, really understood the significance of that night. They knew what the angels had told them about this baby, but did they really get it? 

A couple thousand years later, do we really get it? Will we ever really get it?

The birth of a baby, named Jesus. 

A baby Who would change everything through His life and death.

The promised Messiah. The One prophesied about.

The One missed by so many when He came because of the way He came.

The One missed by so many while He walked on earth because He came to serve, not to exert His power.

The One missed by so many because He dies a criminal's death to become the greatest sacrifice and defeat sin and death for good.

The One still missed by many today.

But for those who stop to notice . . .

for those who are searching for something more . . .

for those who are willing to be humble and serve . . .

the chance to meat the One Who changes everything.

The One Who offers hope.

The One Who offers forgiveness and a second chance.

The One Who offers unconditional love.

The One Who never fails.

It was one night . . . 

in a stable . . .

in a small town . . .

with two poor parents . . .

surrounded by animals . . .

where the world changed forever.

God put His plan in motion to redeem a fallen world,

to restore a broken relationship with His people.

A plan still in motion today.

A plan that still offers hope today.

A birth.

A baby.

A life lived.

A death.

And the greatest of all - a victory over death, a resurrection.

All because of God's vast, unmeasurable, unchanging, unfailing love for each of us.

That makes it something worth celebrating!

What is True Humility?

This is Part 3 in a series on Philippians 2. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.


We don't like the word humility. We don't want to talk about it or think about it. But it comes up consistently in Scripture. Because of this, it becomes clear that humility is key in living our lives following Christ's example.

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others." (Philippians 2:3-4)

Paul calls his readers to humility in how they treat one another. He then goes on to point to the ultimate example of humility - Jesus Christ - in the verses that come next.

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus." (Philippians 2:5)

Being willing to give up everything to serve others and love others. Not seeking to make a name or ourselves, but for God. This is what humility really is. Seeking to serve and love others to make God known, not ourselves.

So, what does it look like to follow Jesus' example of humility? How do we live if we are following His example?

Philippians 2:6-8 says,

     "Who, being in very nature God,
          did not consider equality with God
               something to be grasped;
     rather, He made Himself nothing
          by taking the very nature of a servant,
          being made in human likeness.
     And being found in appearance as a man,
          He humbled Himself
          by becoming obedient to death -
              even death on a cross!"

Jesus gave up all the rights and privileged that came with being God's Son and came to earth as a man. He experienced things as we do living on earth. He didn't come as a king expecting to be served. He wasn't born into a family with status. Jesus didn't come expecting the world to do everything He wanted and serve His every need.

Jesus came to serve and love us! He gave up everything He had so that He could purchase us back from the bondage we were in. He came to free us. And that meant coming to serve us.

This is what true humility looks like. Coming to serve and love others at personal cost. It's not about thinking of ourselves as having no value. But it is, as Paul says earlier, about "[valuing] others above ourselves." (vs. 3). We put others first, as we seek to love and serve them.