Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Burnt Toast and Love
Have you ever considered how your response to life's little imperfections affects those around you? Today's episode of Starting Right unpacks a heartwarming story about burnt toast that carries profound wisdom about compassion, marriage, and thoughtful communication.
We feature a story from Kevin Arthur, who witnessed his father's remarkable response to his mother's burnt toast dinner after a difficult day.
Whether you're navigating family relationships, workplace dynamics, or everyday interactions, this five-minute devotional provides practical wisdom for showing Christ-like compassion when it matters most. Listen in, be encouraged, and discover how eating "burnt toast" without complaint might be one of the most loving things you do today.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mac and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. I heard this story told by a young man named Kevin Arthur. He grew up in a home where he was the only child and both of his parents worked outside the home. His father commuted about an hour each way every day. His mom worked at a school just about five minutes down the road, so she was usually home first and usually prepared supper for dad when he got home much later, kevin said One evening my mother made a dinner after a hard day's work.
Speaker 1:She put a plate of eggs, salad and burnt toast in front of my father. I immediately noticed the burnt toast and I was waiting to see if he was going to complain about it. But my father started to eat them, smiling and asking me how I spent my day at school. Mom apologized to Dad for the burnt toast and I will never forget his response. He said Honey, I love burnt toast. Later, when I went to bed and my dad came over to say goodnight. I asked him if he really liked the burnt toast. He hugged me and said your mother had a very difficult day today and she's really tired. She went out of her way to prepare this meal for us, and why would I blame her and hurt her?
Speaker 1:Burnt toast has never hurt anyone, but words can be very painful. We have to know how to appreciate what others do for us, even if it's not perfect, because it's the intention to do well that counts, and no one is perfect. This is a really great story because there are many lessons within it that we can learn from. The lesson I like the most is how his dad responded to his mom. It would have been very easy for him to complain about the burnt toast and eggs for supper after a very long, hard day of work that he'd had, but he didn't do that. He loved his wife. He loved her so much that he knew that she had had a rough day and the worst thing that he could do was try to hurt her with words of dissatisfaction. It may seem like a small thing, even the expected thing, but he was willing to eat the burnt toast without comment. And honestly, how many times have you or I responded to something insignificant with harsh and hurting words? Yet he chose to be silent. He was willing to eat the burnt toast, he was willing to eat the eggs, he was willing to eat whatever she put before him that night because he loved her and he recognized that she had had a tough day, and the last thing he wanted to do was pile more negativity on her to make her feel even worse than she already did, because obviously she'd had enough of that that day.
Speaker 1:The Bible tells us an awful lot about how we need to treat each other with compassion. In Ephesians 4, verse 32, it says Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God, through Christ, has forgiven you. The interesting word in that verse is the word tenderhearted. There's a part of it that means to prop someone up who's about to fall because of emotional weakness. We're going to be tenderhearted, we're going to lift people up. We're going to prop them up, hold them up when they're going through difficult times Over in 1 Peter 3, verse 8, it says All of you be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble Over.
Speaker 1:In Colossians, chapter 3 and verse 12, therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. The idea of clothing ourselves with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience. It means that we're to take it and actually wrap it around us. It's what people notice when they see us. When we put on our clothes, we check in the mirror to see how we look, how other people are going to perceive us, and that's the image that's here. When we clothe ourselves with the compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience, we're putting that on. So that is the thing that people see and notice about us. It's not something hidden that we reveal all of a sudden. It's out in the open. They know that we are people who care and love and encourage and lift others up.
Speaker 1:Take a look around you at the people that you know, the people in your family, the people you work with. Are you seeing someone who is having a tough day? Do you recognize the signs in how they're acting and reacting? Maybe they're not even acting very friendly, but that's not a time for us to pull away. That's a time for us to show Christ in us, to show our compassion, our kindness, to show that we can be sympathetic, to show that we are tender-hearted to each other and let that reality of God's love that is within us shine through to them. Let's make sure that we're not piling on more problems, more negative things into their lives, but let's use the love of Christ within us to lift them up and encourage them. I hope you have a great day, my friends. Lift someone up, encourage them today and we will talk to you all again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac.
