Please and Thank You

Hey player haters. Just kidding, y'all aren't player haters. I don't even know what that means; I got it from a Chingy song. 

Anyway, this week we have a special guest writer....my sister! You won't want to miss this! She's the best!!! :))

Okbye.

Hi everyone! So for this week’s post, I will be the guest writer. I really liked my sister’s last post about kindness, so I wanted to take my own thoughts on that and use them in this week’s devotional. 

For several months now, I have been baffled by the lack of manners and general courtesy that I see in our society. While I totally understand that we all make mistakes and that no one uses perfect manners all the time, I am truly shocked at the behavior I see in today’s wordly interactions. 

Having manners can actually be a complex task...especially when considering the more social topics. How do I behave at a dinner party? How much should I tip this particular individual? What exactly is business casual attire anyway? There are 13 forks in this table setting, which one should I use? The list could go on and on, but for my purposes I want to think of manners not as a complex set of rules, but as a general attitude regarding the way that we treat others. 

When we were children we were taught the golden rule. Luke 6:31 tells us “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Unfortunately in today’s society, this is often forgotten. I’ve had doors slammed in my face when I was walking into a building carrying hot coffee. I’ve had staff at a doctor’s office not return my calls for weeks (regardless of a fact that my call was pertaining medical issues). I’ve been forced to listen to obscene language and even worse, incessant gossip.  At the same time, however, I’ve been guilty of not having the best manners. I think we can all probably think of multiple times a day where we are the victims of “manners violations”, but calling people out on their poor behavior is not what this post is about. Instead it is about our attitude toward others. 

This is something that has really been bothering me lately. Obviously it is more pleasant when we are all using our manners, but without them we show a lack of love and respect for our brothers and sisters. Since we know that “the greatest commandment is love”, I think that it is imperative that we exert our love upon others, even those that we might come into contact with only once in our lifetime. Our generation is really bad about conveniently exerting our manners. What I mean by this is that manners are used in situations to impress others (typically those that we have deemed important in some way) or used because we think that we will get something out of it later. I want to make it clear that that the best manners are exerted upon everyone. So whether you are wearing Valentino or Wal-Mart, a royal or a commoner, or fall into any other social division, true courtesy should not be based on these divisions. We love each other and show respect for each other. Period. No exceptions.

One of the biggest ways we can use good manners is by saying thank you. When we are gracious and kind to others, we are showing that we love and respect them. In my mind, this is the fundamental component of our lives. We love others. We show our love to them. We are all reunited in Heaven where the time we have to love them will never run out (which sounds like the best thing ever to me).

So in conclusion, I would like to leave you with these quotes:

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.” - Emily Post

“Manner are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson