Accept

Accept

Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.

MY PARENTS MET while they were in college. The first fall they were together my dad asked my mom to come home with him to meet his parents. Before they arrived, my dad explained to his parents that my mom’s mother was deceased and her dad had recently remarried. He went on to expound that my mom’s family tradition growing up had always been to open presents on Christmas morning, and he wondered if they would be willing to make a change to their plans to help my mom feel at home.

My grandparents’ own tradition had always been to open up presents on Christmas Eve, but they quietly changed their custom, accepting and accommodating what my mother had known as a child to make her feel welcome.

It wasn’t until after they were married and years later that my mom found out the truth about their family traditions. She was shocked that my grandparents would so easily shift their own desires to accept hers as their own, even without knowing her yet.

I love hearing my parents recount this story and the valuable lesson of being willing to accept and even change something we hold dear for another person. My grandparents had the wisdom to see how important the tradition would be for my mom and decided to accept it without any fuss about what they had previously done.

It takes maturity to accept different ways of doing things, especially when it goes against our own personal preferences. It takes a willingness to set aside what I may want or think of as important in order to accept what someone else may want or desire. As believers, we are called to be the ones who are gracious, understanding that Christ has accepted each one of us. In turn, we should be willing to accept one another. Because when we do, we will look different from the rest of the world and God will get the glory.

Lord, thank you for accepting each one of us. Help us to extend that acceptance to those around us. Amen.

-Kendra

One Good Step: Think of one way you can accept someone else today, putting their preferences above your own.