Giving the benefit of the doubt

“A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.” Proverbs 12:16
Some of us have difficulty keeping our temper. We look at the list of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) and see ‘patience’ and ‘self-control’ and think, I could do with some of that! As we’ve already seen in other proverbs, holding your tongue is the wise thing to do in pretty much every situation. Every day, we will get annoyed at someone, even if we don’t leave the house. The key is not to vent that annoyance immediately. First, we should give the other person the benefit of the doubt. They may not have meant to be offensive. They may have been trying to make a joke, but not been on your wavelength. Or, they may have been talking about a general situation, and you interpreted it as them complaining about you specifically.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we don’t need to give in to what the flesh wants to do, getting angry, shouting, and generally throwing a tantrum because you think someone is being rude to you. Instead, we can have self-control, wait for the person to finish what they’re saying – and then, if they are being rude, to respond in grace and gentleness.
The children’s saying, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me’, we all know is not true. But how much hurt those names cause us, is up to us – how much we hold onto them and let them fester inside us. So always give people the benefit of the doubt, and then respond as Jesus would have.