Words are a Balm

Once upon a time someone said something to you and you felt glorious. 

One time my grandmother said I was more well-read than her.  This is more amazing when you meet the woman.  She was a Librarian at a school and now she volunteers at a library annex.  Once a week she takes her cloth book bag that in a simpler time would be called a nap sack and she fills it up with pulp fiction.  Mysteries and cop dramas all, and I mean all make it into her bag.  She’s read everybody who’s anybody.  She could put away the history of the Oprah book club in a couple months.  She reads and reads and reads and because my tastes are little more eclectic she laid that whopper on me.  It made me feel like the word compliment was all of a sudden out of style.

One time a man who is known as God Jr. because of his encyclopedic knowledge of the scriptures read my book.  He said, according to his wife, mid-read, “Drew is a better writer than me.”  This man who had written a thousand theological treatises found my literature not-wanting.  He had written a book and had alongside of a healthy sense of arrogance and hubris made the judgment that I was good at writing.  He said that I had a message, a voice.  The word compliment just doesn’t do it. 

Someone has told me I looked handsome.  Someone has told me that I’m smart.  Someone has tried to explain that the crazy stuff I say really makes them feel less crazy.  Someone has complimented my shoes and hat and pen-in-my-hat.  I’ve been told I look like Tom Cruise and Matt LeBlanc because I guess to Asians WE all look the same.  Compliments can be ho hum.  Compliments can make you think that people are messing with you.  Telling the whale that gray makes them look slim; they know is just a veiled insult.  Telling the squirrel that a lot of chicks like them because they’re little is wrong because it’s just so condescending.  Telling the rat that it’s industrious for getting in the trash isn’t a mercy it’s fake sincerity and that’s just insulting.

¹⁵ My child, do not temper your favours with blame nor any of your gifts with words that hurt.

¹⁶ Does not dew relieve the heat? In the same way a word is worth more than a gift.

¹⁷ Why surely, a word is better than a good present, but a generous person is ready with both.

¹⁸ A fool will offer nothing but insult, and a grudging gift makes the eyes smart.

Here’s a special passage you don’t have to think too hard about to KNOW it’s true.  Like these two compliments I’ve mentioned I’m sure there are some hum-dingers that you’ve tucked away into your good things about you bank.  I know that there is something that you remember so that when Peter demands a reckoning at the pearly gates, you’ll be ready.  So-and-So said I was blah blah blah.  It won’t work, but you’re cataloging the good stuff anyway for fear of the Bad and the Ugly.

This blog started because I wanted to spend a little extra time paying attention to wisdom.  I haven’t been doing a good job posting because, I guess, I haven’t been paying attention to wisdom.  I’ll try to remedy that situation soon.  For now, why don’t you think of 10 really good compliments to pay someone? 

Rules for Compliments:

1      - Pick your significant other.  Duh.

2      - Try to pick very few or your closets and most loved.  (Add them to the completed list of ten if you feel you should complement them more.)

3      - Do not decide on nice things to say and pigeon hole your list into those compliments.  (Design a perfectly tailored compliment for each person on your list.)

4      - Choose something based on their character or their God-given ability.  (Don’t tell someone they always know what to wear.)

5      - Give it to someone who needs it.  (I don’t want you to tweet how Lebron James is good at basketball.  He knows.   Trust me; he knows. 

Remember this is about making you wiser not making the world a better place.  While this has the opportunity to improve your relationships with friends, acquaintances, and family its purpose is to help you grow in wisdom.  And how does this do that, you ask?  I’m not sure that I’m not fully invested in the first benefit.  If you however, wanted another reason to believe that this is good for you rather than just other people, nay even the rest of the whole world.  If the term, ‘pay it forward’ is no longer enough, maybe this will help.

Wisdom is knowledge that is used to an end.  And watching for the really valuable stuff in the lives of others is going to teach you about them.  Learn what a woman wants to hear and say it for crying out loud.  Christ is a great example of wisdom coming from watching people.  Christ is a great example of telling people what they needed to hear not what they wanted to hear.  Christ is an example of omni-everything made flesh and you’ll find him among the people giving them great compliments like, ‘You can follow me.’  ‘You can be reborn.’  ‘You can meet God.’  ‘You are perfectly crafted, the handiwork of the creator of the heavens and earth.’  ‘I love you so much that I’d lay down my life for you.’

Of course I know the making the world a better place would be good enough reason to compliment others but to actually follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus while he follows the advice of this Jesus in Chapter 18.