Encouragement done Right

I awoke to a brand new day ready for the routine of life filled with the same old conversations and choices, not expecting many changes to this particular Thursday. I walked out of the door and the first thing I saw was a chalk message calling my apartment mates and I "Classy Men" which led to a collection of encouraging statements written all down the sidewalk from my dorm to our cafeteria. As I walked the encouraging path I thought to myself how much that had made my day, how much the simplest act of kindness can impact us, and the most troubling thought why does this impact us so much? That question may not seem troubling, but think about it: if those little acts of kindness make our days then doesn't that mean we do not expect people to be as kind? Doesn't that mean we expect people to not care or do anything like that? I am not saying we should not have little acts of kindness, but shouldn't our everyday lives be filled with little acts of kindness? Shouldn't we, as a Christian campus, be so filled with kindness and love that it is unexpected to do negative actions? I am hoping for that day, for the day when this campus is so filled with kindness and love that the only actions that are unexpected and shocking are the ones where people are degrading to other people or they lack their desire to care. How much better would our world be if we could have entire campuses so focused on love to do anything that would lack it? I am not in any way attempting to degrade the school that I attend, I just would like to argue that we can do so much better at following the two greatest commandments: Love God and Love your neighbor. So, overall my question for today is if Christians would put away their pride, anger, self-righteousness, and devoted all of their energy to love how much better of a place could we be?

One other note on this topic of encouragement that needs to be addressed. When people directly encourage ourselves we need to be careful not to allow that to fill us with pride. I know that I found that when my former mentor arrived on campus to visit yesterday, I constantly wanted to tell him "Look, people think I am classy!" and point out the chalk writing to him, but I would always stop myself because that was letting my pride take over. When pride takes over it corrupts our attempts at loving each other. To fully live out this life of love, we need to get rid of our pride as well which is one of the hardest sins to deal with because our society encourages and thrives off of it. In giving and receiving encouragement we need to stop our pride from flaring out and allow our love and mercy to triumph over that pride and judgment.

Lord fill us with your love in such a way that it is abnormal to be cruel, prideful, and judgmental. Let Us Love.