God’s grace empowers us to work through conflicts.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
Proverbs 27:17 New Living Translation

This is a picture of partnered geese at the moment of their reunion. The male goose had just splashed down and reunited with his bride. It appears that their heads are touching. Looks nice doesn’t it? What you don’t know is that things didn’t go all that smoothly when he first splashed down.

Fountain Creek Regional Park, Fountain, Colorado

There was plenty of squawking when he arrived. Was it that he promised to return earlier? I mean it could have been his turn to sit on the nest. She probably needed a break. She needed time for herself. How could he be so insensitive?

Relationships are difficult.

We live in a time when everyone has to be right, so much so, that we don’t know how to disagree with each other and remain friends. Following the lead of radio and television personalities, we call make fun of people who disagree with us so that our point looks like the only point worth believing. Then we post it on Facebook and declare our victory.

And in the end, we have lost the ability to sharpen each other as we pick up our marbles and go home and not work through a problem.

These two geese got it right. They worked through their momentary problem and found common ground.

The grace of God at work in our lives is the power to work through problems and maybe find common ground and in the end find that we have been sharpened. not destroyed, in the process.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner