Kindness
I asked a husband the other day how long he’s been married. He told me that they’d been happily married for thirteen years. The wife poked him in the side with her elbow as she corrected him. “We’ve been married for fifteen years.” “Yea,” he replied, “and thirteen have been pretty happy.”
Some people are tackful instead of tactful. Everything they say is tacky and when it has a point—it is sure to be sharp.
Men all over the world have wondered how to answer the inevitable shopping question. “Honey, do I look fat in this dress?” Do you say:
(A) Yes, or
(B) To be honest with you, you look fat in any dress, or
(C) The older you get, the more you look like your mother, or
(D) No baby, you look just fine, but perhaps a different dress will look even better.
Honesty doesn’t mean you never have an unspoken thought. Some times it is wise to carefully word your response to the question of a loved one.
What do people really mean when they say, “Can I be totally honest with you?” Usually, they are about to say something to you that will hurt your feelings. That isn’t honesty; it is cruelty.
Honesty and cruelty are not synonyms. The scripture does not teach us to be kind to one another, unless we are being honest. The two virtues are not mutually exclusive.
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Ephesians. 4:32
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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