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
Math, Bananas, and a Side of Humble Pie
A light classroom story about “five apples” opens into a deeper look at how missing facts change our certainty, why we rush to judgment, and how humility and patience protect our relationships. We share honest family moments, ground the lesson in Ephesians 4:2, and end with encouragement to slow down and build others up.
Be blessed, my friends. Have a great day.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, 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. Hey, good morning, everyone. Today I've got a story for you about a grade one teacher who was just having a little bit of a difficult time working with one of her students. The student's name was Kevin. He was six years old, and the teacher was going over some math questions with him. She said to him, Kevin, if I give you two apples and then another two apples, how many apples will you have? He answered, five apples. She was a little bit surprised by this, but she tried again. And this time she used her fingers to help make him count with her. She said, Okay, Kevin, look, if I give you one, two apples and another one, two apples, how many apples will you have? And again he said, five apples. This time she was really getting a little bit annoyed, but she controlled herself. And she remembered that Kevin's mother had once told her that he likes bananas. So she tried it this way. She said, Okay, Kevin, if I give you two bananas and then another two bananas, now how many bananas do you have? Kevin looked up and said, Four bananas. Ah, she was so relieved. She figured they were now back on track. So again she asked him, Okay, now tell me, Kevin, if I give you two apples and then another two apples, how many apples do you have? He answered, Teacher, I have five apples. This time she couldn't control herself. She burst out with a little bit of anger and said, How can you have five apples if I give you four apples? Kevin very sheepishly looked up and said, Because I have one apple in my lunch bag. There was complete silence. The teacher calmed down and she regretted her anger. I can recall several times over the years having conversations with someone where they were disagreeing with what I was saying. In some cases those conversations got somewhat tense, but what was really bad is that eventually there was some more information that I was not aware of that came out in the midst of this conversation. Some new facts that I didn't know. And suddenly I realized that I was wrong. And when I realized I was wrong and I had been so intense about it, I suddenly felt foolish and embarrassed myself. I think all of us who've had children have had times where there's been a fight amongst the kids or something's gone wrong. I can recall one time with my two boys, one of them suddenly had this sort of bald patch on his head where his hair had been cut. He immediately told us that his brother had done it, and it was his brother's fault. All the while the brother was maintaining his innocence. I didn't do it, I didn't do it. And the one with the haircut said, yes he did, yes he did. Well, we punished the brother who was accused of doing it. And it's just within the last couple of years we found out that the one with the haircut? Yeah, he did it to himself. And I felt badly even after all these years thinking that that had happened. But it does. I think we've all punished one of our children on the word of the other, only to find out later that there were more facts, there was more information that we needed to have. And we do that not just with our children, we do it with the people around us. We do that when we hear gossip, we do that when we hear stories about other people, we do that when we hear about our neighbors and our pastors and our friends. It's very easy for us to fall into that trap of coming to conclusions about something when we don't have all the facts. Ephesians chapter four and verse two tells us be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. How often do we let our busyness in life keep us from being humble and gentle and patient? We try to give a quick answer or make a quick decision about something or someone, and then a little bit later we get more information and we realize that story was not quite the way it was told to me. That person is not quite the way that the first story says that they were. And then we're in real trouble if we've actually repeated that story in a negative way to others already. God is very wise when he says, be quick to listen and slow to speak. The challenge for us is to learn to bear with one another in love by being humble and gentle and patient with them. And then when we get all the facts, then we can grow together and learn together and change together as we need to, but we can't allow ourselves to jump to those quick conclusions. Let's build one another up. Let's keep each other strong. Let's live lives of victory and power that God has for us, and He will bless and guide us with it every day. Be blessed, my friends. Have a great day. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
