Friday, February 10, 2017

Amazing Grace


With all the rhetoric of late across this great nation of ours, I’m amazed at how we’ve transformed ourselves from a voice of grace and dignity to a tone of disrespect and insult.




Grace is defined in numerous ways:

“Simple elegance or refinement of movement”
“The free and unmerited favor of God”
“Disposition to or an act or instance of kindness”

What troubles me is that lately I haven’t seen much grace in alignment with these definitions.  What I see instead is just the opposite.

Antonyms of Grace include:

“Interference”
“Crudeness”
“Flaw”

Recent Facebook posts, tweets, and conversation go something like this:

“Our political system is defective.”

“There are too many obstacles to overcome because of the failure of others.”

“She’s inferior and ignorant.  She doesn’t belong there!”

What if we were to embrace the way we communicate to and about others with grace and dignity vice put-downs and insults?  What if our conversations across social media and face-to-face reflected something similar to the following:

“I may not agree with his stance, but I respect that he’s entitled to his opinion on the matter.”

“I appreciate that despite her struggle to answer the question, she did her best to remain composed during the heated debate.”

“Sure, we have problems, but collectively we have enough compassion for one another to overcome anything!”

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we took a more graceful approach to our discussions?  Think about the possibilities if as one nation, one world, we chose to embrace differences as opposed to ridiculing what we don’t agree with.

Let’s give grace a try, shall we?

A Common Man

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