“For if I make you sorrowful then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2Corinthians 2:2)
In this verse the Apostle Paul is telling us that relationships are two-way streets. Whatever we send down each relationship street comes back up that street. (Galatians 1:15-20)
Jesus taught this same truth when He used a marketplace metaphor. In the marketplaces Jesus encountered, if a vendor bought produce from you and you suspected his bushel measurement was inaccurate, you could ask him to go get his bushel measurement to use when you sold your produce to him. Jesus taught in this way that whatever measure we use in giving to people, they will use that same standard in giving back to us. (Matthew 7:1-5)
By application, Paul and Jesus are teaching us that if we make people unhappy in our marriages and families we will find ourselves living with unhappy people made unhappy by us. I knew a wise pastor who did a lot of marriage counseling. He wrote a little poem that had this line in it: “You can’t control the weather or rainy days, but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you.”
If you are surrounded with unhappy people because you make them unhappy, consider how much better it would be if you made those same people happy. Another wise pastor said that with Jesus the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.
The bottom line is do we want to be surrounded by happy or unhappy people? What are we sending down the two-way streets of our relationships?
Dick Woodward, 27 January 2012
4SpiritualSecrets 