The other night I had the honour of emceeing the Canadian Bible Society's annual banquet for the Kitchener Waterloo branch. I haven't had a whole lot of public speaking appearances, but when I have, I have really enjoyed those opportunities. This night was no exception.
As the night went on, I felt as if God was doing something really special. The guest musicians shared a touching (but tragic) experience from their personal life, and a member of the Bible Society translation office shared some really wonderful stories of how the Bible Society was able to help out a small village in Africa.
I spent the evening thinking about how I could "love my neighbours", which in this case, was Canadian Bible Society supporters. The result was that I felt it necessary to try and talk to as many of the people in attendance as I could, and take a genuine interest in their lives.
The part of the evening that really stood out to me took place within a 2 minute or less timeframe. Immediately after I had dismissed the guests for the evening, a lady made a bee line straight for me. As I mentioned, I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities for public speaking, so I had wondered if I made a grand faux pas at some point during the evening.
What this lady wanted to inform me is that I didn't do the customary "thank the cooks and kitchen staff" tribute, where I as the emcee ask the workers from the kitchen to come out and we all applaud their work. Should I have done so, probably, but given that all of the workers were pretty much members of the executive team, I partially thought that by doing so we as the executive would only be patting ourselves on the back.
After I sincerely apologized to this person, I simply said that "I forgot" (maybe I should have been more honest and gone into the decision making process I had outlined above) and said sorry if I had offended her. Her response is what prompted me to write this blog. "Oh, well, it's not for my sake, I just thought that (the head kitchen worker) did a lot of work, and should have been recognized for that. I just thought you should know."
In other words, that was dumb, I can't believe you did that, how rude of you for not doing so, don't do that again.
Firstly, I really don't have anything against what this lady said to me - after all, in the end, she is correct. I made a judgment error and will be more sensitive to that going forward. I did apologize to the head person of the kitchen staff after the evening was over.
The first point of this post is that I need to be careful with the delivery of my message. I may have the right content, but, if I pass along that message without wrapping it in love then I may offend my neighbour and I fail to love my neighbour, thus breaking God's second greatest commandment.
The second point of this post is that if you are on the wrong end of a not-so-friendly message, then as a Christian you're responsibility is to prevent yourself from getting offended. After all, Jesus did die for that person - making that person as important as you are, even if you don't like what they have to say.
What a critical lesson to learn. I have been thinking about humility a lot lately. I think see where I am strong and where I tend to fail too easily.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that God seems to use a certain narrow personality type to poke holes in our humility to test it? Quite aggravating, though necessary. I think that learning and living this lesson is one of the top three all-important key virtues to acquire for a holy and happy life.
Good on you.
I find it comforting to know that the only one who has it all together is Jesus. I find it helps in that if you start to compare yourself against someone else, and you start thinking that they are so much better than you because of some particular quality, then the reality is that you likely have qualities that are better than theirs. The inverse is true as well. If you think you're better than someone else because of your own qualities, then there is always something that the other person has that you could improve on. This could probably tie into a message about the church being related to the body, where everyone has a role to play, and utilizing the best of everyone's gifts.
ReplyDeleteThe same that applies to the church also applies to business principles (such as the four phases of fully functioning groups - forming, storming, norming and performing), friendships (as iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another), and, marriage (two become one).
I guess by loving (and thereby getting to know and working with) each other, we become more refined.