A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.
Proverbs 15:1

Dear God, I wonder if anyone ever built a fortune cookie company out of Proverbs. Each of them are seemingly isolated. I don’t know who broke them into chapters (was it the King James translators?), but they would seem just about impossible to organize. I guess one project that would be interesting would be to write each on down on a spreadsheet, build categories, and then sort them by category to see if I can find any unique patterns in the ones from similar categories. For example, this one would fit into a category I could call conflict. What could I learn by reading other proverbs on conflict by reading them together?

That being said, for this morning’s purposes, I hope I lived up to this wisdom recent with some people with whom I’ve disagreed. At the same time, there were issues that needed to be addressed. Silence wasn’t an option. Ironically, no matter how gentle I tried to be, I still don’t think my words were heard in the spirit in which I meant them. In one case in particular, the listener pretty much only heard things through the filter they brought into the conversation. As long as I had a particular stance, they were not going to hear anything else, regardless of how I said it.

Father, I don’t know what else to do by your figure out how to somehow lovingly press on, even though the road can be lonely. There are simply some things and some relationships that are outside of my ability to maintain on my own. Help me to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen