In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5, NIV)
Have you ever run a putt 10 feet past the cup, not realizing how downhill it was until you viewed it from the other side?
On the eighth green at Trinity Forest, home of the recently played AT&T Byron Nelson tournament, a straight path to the hole isn’t the prudent play when you find yourself on the wrong side of the mound splitting the green. You’d be wise to putt well past the hole and let the slope of the backstop return your ball to the cup.
In such cases, you wouldn’t notice these nuances unless you looked at the landscape from multiple vantage points.
Similarly, God places opportunities in our path every day, yet we typically don’t notice because we only see them from one point of view: our own.
See if any of these sound familiar.
You’d be wise to extend grace rather than one of your fingers, as I’m sure you require some in your life as well.A server’s attitude affects our ability to enjoy the dining experience.
We become irritated by the beggar at the intersection, as we think to ourselves “go get a job.”
We have an encounter with what Rick Warren likes to call an EGR (Extra Grace Required). Like say, someone who cuts you off in traffic. Right after church no less.
Just as an extra set of eyes can help us reading greens, today’s verse is a good reminder that having the mindset of Jesus can keep us from three-putting in life.
Let’s review those situations again with a renewing of our mind.
Paul advised his readers to “not look to our own interests but to the interest of others” (Philippians 2:4). If we found out the server is breaking under the stress of being a single parent with a broken dream, we might have compassion for his or her situation, rather than pouting about refills not arriving fast enough.
The Golden Rule would have us do to others as we’d have done to us (Luke 6:31). What if we were to ask the beggar his or her name while offering water we keep in our car for just such occasions? Wouldn’t that provide more hope than a look of disdain while waiting for the light to turn green?
And I’m pretty sure the driver didn’t have you in mind with that lane-changing maneuver, so don’t take it personally. You’d be wise to extend grace rather than one of your fingers, as I’m sure you require some in your life as well. (I know I did when I turned in this devotion late even though I knew the deadline four weeks in advance!)
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Drew Hamilton
May 22, 2019
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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