Weekly Virtue: Acceptance

Acceptance can be a hard virtue to truly grasp. I think it can be so easy to say we are accepting but so hard to actually mean it. I think we all need to put this virtue into our lives a bit more every day.

Acceptance is defined as the act of accepting something or someone.

Look around your daily life. How often do we stop and pass judgment on others, or even on ourselves? I think one of the great gifts Jesus gave us was that He will do the judging and we are not the ones to judge. We are just here to accept. I read something the other day that has been sticking with me as I view the world. It said "Do not judge for you know not the storm God has asked her to walk through." How true these words are. How often we get one side of the story, how often we get one viewpoint and make our judgments and cast our stones. Do we stop to think before we so quickly analyze at how another is living their life or the choices they are making? How we would make different (better) choices? But people do not always need someone there to solve their problems. Sometimes we just need someone there when we are struggling to help us along.

Now the other side of the coin. How often do we worry about what others think or what others may say? We worry about what someone may think of us or how we come across. Does it matter? Let them speak, let them think, for at the end whose opinion really matters? And are we thinking about HIM when we are stewing over others opinions?

So often we beat ourselves us up because the house isn't clean enough or supper was late getting on the table, our car is a disaster, I meant to balance the checkbook, but other things came up. Did I remember to pick up the dry cleaning? Where is that missing library book? But we need to accept that we are just one person. And we cannot do it all. Nor can our parents, our spouses, or children. We have to accept that they too are just trying their best.

At the end of the day, may we all just stop and ask ourselves, did we do the best we could today? Did we grow closer to God? Did we try to please Him? And if the answer is yes, then accept the rest and try again tomorrow.