A soft answer

Our Daily Bread
A soft answer?  What the heck is that?  hehehe  I need sooooo much work in this area!  I joked with a friend last week "I don't even own a pair of kid gloves, much less willing to wear them when they might be needed!"  Giving a soft answer is equal to handling folks with kid gloves in my silly mind!

The devotion is not only Biblical, it gives a real world example!  God has been bringing this to my attention over and over the past few months.  I get very intense sometimes.  That intensity leads to being impatient and short with people, often people I care about very much.  It is not a good thing!  I am praying to be more patient, more loving, more "soft-answer" enabled!

Lord, please help us all to give soft answers to hard hearts!

Teaching Tuesday
We studied the letters to the Corinthians this week in D1 class.  Very cool books!  I don't always understand the writings of Paul.  Our book helped me understand some things that have troubled me for years.  I never really thought about how the letters to the Corinthians were responses to letters received by Paul.  I guess I never tried to find the letters that he received so I could read his responses in context.  Out of context, some of those responses are very problematic for me!

Here is a something I plan to do for the devotional tomorrow night. I read about this exercise somewhere, so I am going to share it with the class.  I hope it means something to you as well.  In short, you substitute your name for the word "love" in these verses.  It looks like this.
I Corinthians 14:4-7

Duane is patient
Duane is kind.
Duane does not envy,
Duane does not boast,
Duane is not proud
Duane does not dishonor others
Duane is not self-seeking
Duane is not easily angered
Duane keeps no record of wrongs
Duane does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth
Duane always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


Try this with your name.  ;-)

Other Stuff
I did a lot last night!  I was soooooo tired when I went to bed.  Then the perfect storm hit.  A new supplement I took made me hyper.  I couldn't sleep.  My blood sugar went low.  A gastric problem caused me to spend lots of time in the bathroom.  I have a guest visiting this week, so I have to be careful not to walk around the house naked!  hehehe  Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep.  I am feeling it today.

I weighed myself.  I gained almost six pounds in the last week.  ;-(  I should have eaten better over vacation.  Oh well.  I had a good time.  I will lose it this week and then move on with my weight loss.  I can do this!

I plan to exercise tonight and then work on my home theater stuff.  Oh, I forgot I haven't put laundry away or emptied the dishwasher yet.  I have to do that too.

Let go, my friends!  God will be there to catch you and hold you in his loving arms!