OnFire Encouragement Letter
OnFire #147 Making Things Worse
Hi Folks:
What a neat time we had
with Mark on TV. He appeared on Live at 5, which is the region’s most-watched
news and current affairs magazine show. He was a little nervous and regretted
that he didn’t have a clean demonstration, but the video they showed of him
from
That’s our big news this week. Hope your week is going well.
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My word once led to a man being fired. At one job I had, we had a man who used to go missing partway through his shift. One day the owner asked me to check up on him. Had he been drinking? I went off to find him, and soon I did. It was obvious he had been drinking and so he got the rest of the summer off.
I was worried when I saw him the next day. While he was usually nice enough, would he say anything to me? Would he hold me responsible for losing his job? Did he know I reported back to the owner the night before? He didn’t say anything to me, thankfully, and I haven’t seen him since.
It was a different matter for Joseph. He was dad’s favourite, and dad used him to check up on his brothers, who were out tending the large flocks of sheep and goats. His word got the brothers in trouble, we discover in Genesis 37. Its one thing to report on the hired hands, quite another when they are your relatives. The brothers resented him.
And then Joseph made it worse. He began to tell his family about the dreams he was having, dreams that his family members would one day bow down before him. This was crazy. He might have been the favourite, but his place in the family as second youngest would always place him low in the family power structures. So when he told the brothers they added his dreams to their list of reasons why they didn’t like him.
I am reminded that sometimes we make our relationship troubles worse. Relationships can be tough enough, especially when they are as complicated as Joseph’s family. But we can make them worse by our own insensitive behaviour.
I think back to when my mother and step-father married. We squeezed two families into one house and generally did OK, but we had our issues from time to time. I can see how I occasionally made things worse. I used to take my big stereo speakers, place them face-down on the floor, and turn up the bass. I don’t remember why I did this, but I do recall that it annoyed my step-sisters immensely. It seems kind of silly and insensitive to me now. It certainly didn’t help us to get along.
Relationships can be complicated. Some may even be difficult. But we don’t need to make them worse by saying or doing something insensitive. Its one thing to be difficult on their own, quite another when we add to the trouble.
So this letter is a note of caution. Paul says in Romans 12:18, “As much as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
Hope this helps. Be OnFire.
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