Giving Grace

I was going to take my daughter to her hip hop dance session one dark winter night. I thought I was locked in but as I was pulling out of the driveway, I almost ran into a father and his kid walking on the sidewalk. He was furious, visibly furious and rightfully. And I felt terrible because it was clearly on me, I wasn’t paying full attention. I mean, if it happened to me while walking my kid, I probably would have stormed over and well, at minimum got into a screaming match, at worst inflicted some extreme violence on him. I have a continuing battle with anger management. 

So what do I take from this? Well one, self driving cars just can’t come quickly enough. Humans, even the most careful ones, are just too distracted & error prone these days. 

The second thing, as the bible says, “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” Incredibly wise words. Fix yourself first. I tend to get enraged when I see people driving badly, not paying attention, doing weird dumb things in their car. The car is a weapon and very dangerous if you let it be. But we are human and mistakes happen. And I need to learn to be more tolerant, less judgemental to say the least. 

I need to learn to give more grace to people. Everyone is literally fighting battles in their head these days. I feel the stress and tension in people around me, people are really struggling, especially in America it seems. God knows how rough the last few years have been personally. So be kinder than you need to be. We can all do with a bit more kindness and grace in our lives.