bless your heart.

I'm sitting here on this rainy Monday absolutely freezing at my desk, and a little tired because I didn't make good decisions about my bedtime last night.  Despite those things, I spent some really great time with Jesus this morning and I asked for him to make my spirit sensitive to the things I should be learning and I just now learned something really cool, so thanks, Jesus, for two things:  1. waking me up this morning with enough time to pray and seek after you and 2.  for this really cool lesson that I'm about to share. 

My office is small, probably no bigger than most of your living rooms, and that includes office space for 7 people.  So, you can imagine that we're readily involved, both voluntarity and involuntarily, in the lives of our co-workers every minute of every day.  I typically plug my ears with headphones and work pleasantly to the musical selections of my day, but this morning has been different.  I figured that if I wanted the Lord to open my heart to learning opportunities, the first step was going to be to listen.  So, I am keeping the headphones out of my ears today. 

Ten minutes ago provided the first learning opportunity.  One of my co-workers was on the phone talking to a doctor -- I don't know the specifics of their conversation, but I do know that my heart heard three particular words and then my spirit learned a lesson.  Bless your heart.  She said it on the phone at least 5 times, and then I started thinking about what she could be saying that about -- then, I realized that instead of trying to investigate the cause for my own satisfaction that it would be really cool if I actually learned how to bless people's hearts.  Instead of instantly gratifying my needs, I learned that when I say things, I should mean them.  How different would things be if I actually started intentionally blessing people with my actions, words and thoughts?  How life-changing would it be if through my intentional blessing, I was enabling people to believe the best about themselves and also to bless other people?  My spirit just learned a lesson -- blessing people has to be intentional.  We have to approach the relationships in our lives believing the best and with intent to bless in every way possible.  That's how we spread the Kingdom.

I also prayed this morning that the Lord would equip me with the resources necessary to bless others today and this week.  It started with the lesson, now on to the blessing. 

Happy Monday :)