I was reading in Proverbs this week, and it got me thinking ... The Bible says that Jesus was full of grace and truth. One of the ways we can express grace is by being gracious. To be honest, I don’t always want to be gracious.
Many times the main form of graciousness is how someone speaks. The Bible says in Proverbs 22:11: "He who loves a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king as his friend."
Sometimes it's hard to speak graciously to someone who has said something negative about you or who has done something wrong to you. It could be a personality conflict or a genuine difference. It may be someone who is immature or someone who has bad information. Jesus did say to love our enemies.
Seems to me that gracious living happens when I give someone the benefit of the doubt. I think that’s what Jesus was talking about when he told us to remove the log from our own eye. While we don’t want to excuse the truth of un-Christlike behavior, gracious living can happen when we speak graciously no matter what has been spoken to us.
