Day 127- An Attitude Adjustment First

I read in a book a while back that one way to improve your attitude is to silently say "I love you" to all the people you meet.  So, that's what I did for my "first" today.

All right, so this was a bit weird at first.  The truth is it was pretty weird for the men and kind of creepy for the ladies. I thought, "If this comes out of my mouth, I could get arrested."  So, after just a bit, I changed my little silent mantra.  Instead, I said, "I'm praying for you and I love you."  That worked for a while and then I realized that I was not praying for them at all. I was just imagining words.  Sooo, I changed it to God's blessings on you and I love you.

I worked on this pretty hard today.  I was concentrating so much that I almost forgot to get 2 items on my list at Wal-Mart and had to go back and get them. I'm not sure that the little mantra was to blame, but when I got home I found out I had left 2 items at the store; 2 different items I might add.  I left the peanut butter and jelly of all things. In my defense, I did ask the lady if I had everything and she spun the little deal and said yes.  The mystery of the missing peanut butter and jelly threatened to derail my attitude adjustment day,  However, I pressed on.

Found this symbol of love in the backyard

Some are easy for me to love 

 

When I stood up to greet the people at church tonight, I remembered to say this mentally. What was really cool is that our worship leader tonight stood up and said, "I love each one of you." It was not even her "first" and she outdid me.  I was thankful for the reminder and felt a bit outdone.

I did notice a difference in my attitude towards people today. The big thing I noticed was that I was less judgmental. It is easy for me to sort of size up people as I walk around.  This really helped me to remember that the biggest command God has given me is to love someone.  It does not matter if I think they are responsible/irresponsible, cute/not so cute, smart/opposite of smart, fashionable/not so fashionable, or whatever.  God has commanded me to love everybody and that's hard to do when you are kind of sizing people up and putting them into categories. I did not realize how much I did that until today.

I found it also helped me to smile at people more.  It's hard to frown at people while silently saying, "God's blessings to you and I love you."  The smile just seems to naturally follow that thought process. Perhaps people smiled back at me more or perhaps it was just my imagination.  Either way, that is not a bad thing.

This also helped me to remember 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3: If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Those are pretty strong words. It's easy for me to read those words and think that's a nice sentiment about love. It is something else to think that if I don't love the people I preach to, serve, pastor, parent, then I am not doing anything in God's eyes. It is worthless.  Wow, that is pretty strong when I really think about that.  Maybe I need to do this "first" a lot more often.

Thankful that love is part of the abundant life
Barry

3 things I thank God for today
1. Roses
2. The richness of Ephesians 1
3. I'm a part of the family of God