“Are you kidding me?!”

Above is a picture of my oldest daughter’s birthday party. Her younger sister had just blown out her candles and you can see how unimpressed she was. I’m sure she was thinking in her head “Are you kidding me!?”. This same type of situation happens to all of us in some way or another. All of us have felt the same way my oldest daughter felt in this moment. Maybe you had a great idea at work and someone else got credit for it or you thought you were getting a promotion that some one else ended up getting. Maybe someone you know pretends to be someone you know they are not and yet they’re getting all sorts of acclamations and praise. Life can be full of “Are you kidding me?”, “Seriously???” and “Not fair!” moments.

So, what do we do in moments like these? Well, in my daughter’s case we lit the candles again and made sure she was the one who got to blow them out, however this type of justice is rarely the case in adult life. No one is going to “re-light” our candles so to speak. I was trying to figure out what the right word would be for how to act in situations such as this and I landed on the word gracious. The definitions of gracious are; courteous, kind and pleasant, (in Christian belief) showing divine grace, merciful, compassionate, and kind.

Can you imagine how many times God is probably looking down at our lives and choices and is thinking “Are you kidding me!?” He may even have this same expression on his face looking down at our miss deeds. We want God to be gracious to us and the good news is that He is indeed a gracious God. Joel 2:13 says, “And rend your heart and your garments. Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.” We as followers of Christ can try to do the same when we are frustrated with people or situations. We can be slow to anger, abounding

in lovingkindness and relenting of evil. This type of response is not natural to us, what is natural is to be angry, roll our eyes and cross our arms in disgust. Acting as Christ would act takes practice and trying over and over again, just trying to do better each and every day. Philippians 4:5 says, “Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near”. Let your graciousness be known to everyone, choose kindness over anger, forgiveness over grudges, and let your faith in our loving and gracious God lead you on a righteous path.

Have a blessed week,

Katie Kringstad