Not Like Preschool

Ephesians 4:1–6

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received
• With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love
• Strive to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace
• One body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call

Applying the Word to My Life:
One of my boys had just made the jump from preschool to kindergarten. I think it was the very first day. He walked up to the teacher, looked around at how things were going, and told her, “You are doing this all wrong,” then walked off. Thankfully, she kept the conversation going long enough to figure out what he meant. He had really liked preschool, and kindergarten was not doing the same things. In his mind, the solution was simple: she should change.

There is something painfully familiar in that. One of the fastest ways to get a negative reaction out of someone is to try to change them. People do not usually respond well to being managed, corrected, or pressured from the outside, especially when it touches their habits, their identity, or the way they think things ought to go. One of the realities in life is that I cannot control what others do. That means I cannot make someone else humble, patient, gentle, or holy.

But there is something I can control. I can make it harder for them to live those things around me. My pride can make it harder. My impatience can make it harder. My sharpness can make it harder. That part belongs to me.

That is something I have had to keep learning as a parent. Rules matter. Expectations matter. Consequences matter. But they only get me so far. They can get a certain kind of compliance, but they do not win the heart. If what I really want is not just outward behavior, but sons who grow into real humility, patience, self-control, and love, then I have to do more than enforce rules. I have to help them understand the why, I have to try to model the life I am asking them to live, and I need to be humble enough to apologize when I get it wrong.

Paul understands this. He does not begin by telling us how to fix everyone else in the body of Christ. Instead he begins with the kind of people we are called to become. Unity is not preserved by finally getting everyone else under control. It is preserved when grace starts changing the way we carry ourselves inside the body.

Paul roots this in “one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Unity is not just a strategy for getting along. It is a reality we have already been given in Christ, and our job is not to manufacture it, but to stop tearing at it. That is why humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another matter so much. They are not soft virtues for people who want to avoid conflict. They are the habits that make shared life possible.

It is easy for me to think the biggest threat to unity is what somebody else is doing wrong. Paul pulls my eyes back to what is closer. The first place unity is either guarded or damaged is in me. In my tone. In my reactions. In the way I carry frustration. In the way I bear with weakness.

Paul is not asking me to become the manager of everyone else’s soul. He is asking me to pay closer attention to the way my own soul enters the body. The real question is not whether I can spot impatience, pride, or harshness in the people around me. The real question is what those things stir up in me, and whether I am willing to let grace deal with that first. If I belong to one body, then the fault lines I notice around me may say less about everyone else than I think. They may be showing me exactly where Christ wants to begin His work in me.

The problems I see most clearly in the people around me are often a better measure of the places I am being called to grow.

My Response for Today:
Today, I will pay attention to one frustration and ask what it is revealing about me.