Filtering Feedback

I do a fair amount of teaching on various training courses that are run from Newfrontiers churches. This is something I enjoy doing, but I have to admit to a certain dread when the email comes into my inbox with the title “Training Feedback.” As we have bought into the contemporary obsession with “360 degree feedback”, students have to complete a feedback form for every block of training and a summary of this then gets sent on to the relevant teacher.

Generally the feedback I receive is pretty positive, but I am always far more conscious of anything that is negative. Inevitably, there will be some in any group who just don’t connect with what is taught. This might be due to a lack of interest in that particular subject, a failure on my part to succeed to teach in a way that engages that student, or simply a failure to connect on a personal level. So, in a class of 20-30 students I can normally expect the majority to be pretty happy, but to have two or three who plainly don’t like me!

Praise is welcome, and criticism can be helpful, if it means sharpening up for next time, but both criticism and praise can be serious enemies to the wellbeing of one’s soul. It is a fairly universal human trait to feel the criticism of the few rather more acutely than the praise of the many and I think this must be a reflection of what Augustine identified as the fundamental human sin of self-love. In the end, if we are truly secure in who we are in Christ, if we discharge the duties Jesus calls us to with diligence and delight, and if we focus on him rather than ourselves, well-founded criticism will help us, while ill-founded criticism will not crush us. But if we become slaves to the opinions of men and make an idol of our ego, criticism will either grind us down, or cause us to become aggressive in self-defence. Without a proper grounding in Christ, praise can be just as destructive though. Rather than being something to encourage us and direct further praise to Jesus we can end up enslaved by the need for approval.

Taken in sum this means that handling feedback well is tricky. It is difficult not to brood on the criticism, or to get puffed up by the praise. And, to be honest, this means I often think I’d rather not get the feedback!

However, because encouragement is good, and criticism can be helpful, it is worth thinking about how we can give good feedback…

1. I think the first thing is that feedback should not be anonymous. If you have something positive to say to someone it is good to say it to them directly – and this principle applies even more in the case of negative feedback. One of the great problems with comments on blogs is the way in which commenters often hide behind anonymity. This means people say things on blogs they would never say if face to face with the person they are criticizing, and this is why we see so much vitriol and ugliness on blogs. Anonymous criticism is cowardly. Don’t do it.

2. Feedback should also be specific. Why did you like or dislike something? Why did you find it interesting or uninteresting? Don’t merely say, “That was interesting.” Explain why. How, specifically, could it have been done better? What, specifically, needs adjusting?

3. While being specific, try to keep feedback from becoming over personal. It is too easy to make subjective judgments (like on a ‘reality’ TV show) based on how attractive we find the person to be. Don’t do this. Instead, try to be objective about the quality of what they have done.

4. Aim to provide feedback that will actually help the person do better next time. Put yourself in their shoes and try to imagine what is most likely to spur them on to greater heights.

5. If you are going to err, err on the side of generosity!

I’m sure there are other points that could be added to this list, but these are the ones that most quickly spring to mind for me. There are then some corollary points to note if you are the one receiving feedback. These might include…

1. Don’t base your spiritual and emotional wellbeing on the feedback you receive. Your primary calling (and security) is to delight yourself in Jesus and experience his grace in your life. The negative or positive feedback of others needs to take a very much lower priority in our thinking than the discipline and love of Jesus.

2. Take on board criticism that is well founded – but use it as a springboard to do better next time around rather than a club to beat yourself with.

3. Try not to brood on negative feedback. Take on board what you need to take on board, learn from it, and move on.

4. Don’t become defensive, and don’t become a man pleaser. Defensiveness tends to make your critics all the more aggressive, which becomes a self-defeating circle of negativity. But trying to make yourself popular simply for the reward of being popular is also a failure of character – sometimes we have to say things that are unpopular if we are to remain faithful.

5. Remember the times when your feedback has been less than helpful – either overly fawning or unnecessarily harsh. If you’ve got it wrong, other people will too!

In the end, there is no way feedback can be genuinely 360 degrees because as fallible humans we never see the whole picture. But our Father in heaven does, and it is him we should seek to please, and whose “Well done, good and faithful servant” we live for.

Contextualising & Contending

On Sunday morning I was preaching about how those of us who are Christians need to contextualise the gospel – that is, like the apostle Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16-34), we need to find ways to communicate the gospel effectively with those who do not know Jesus. Then, Sunday evening, I watched Later… which featured Plan B performing songs from his new album Ill Manors. Plan B’s depiction of alienated British youth is powerful and insightful, and I can sense an army of Christian youth workers planning their next talk thinking, “I’ll use that!”

The track Lost my way is particularly powerful, from the opening line, “Lost my way, fell down a hole, no-ones going to come and save my soul,” to the conclusion, “If you don’t believe in something you’ll fall for anything.” It even contains a summary of the Genesis account of the fall (at 2:17 on this video).

There are all kinds of gospel-cultural observations and links I could make about this – but how about this for an exercise… Why not watch the clip and then answer the following questions:

• What culture[s] are reflected in this track?
• What are the underlying cultural issues the track identifies?
• How do the gospel themes of rebellion, reconciliation and re-creation speak to the issues Plan B raises?
• If you got into conversation with a young person expressing the kind of sentiments found in this track how would you respond?
• How could you respond to this track positively, rather than merely negatively?
• How can the church address the kind of social problems reflected in Lost my way?

Creative Destruction

Yesterday I returned from a Newfrontiers (UK) elders and wives conference, although my wife wasn’t able to go, so I formed part of the bachelor party. Newfrontiers has been going through a period of significant transition over the past few years, and the conference reflected that.

The current transition has been precipitated by the handing on of leadership by Newfrontiers’ founding father, Terry Virgo, but the reality is that we have always been a movement in transition. One of our axioms is “Constant change is here to stay!” and that has certainly been our experience. This means we have become somewhat expert at creative destruction, and have a habit of scrapping things just as they start to go really well – the prime example of this being the closing of Stoneleigh Bible Week eleven years ago. 

Our current transition has seen Terry releasing authority to a new team (and teams) and the creative destruction of one, central, organising hub around which the movement turns. This has caused a certain amount of pain and confusion for numbers of churches, as it is not yet clear where and to whom everyone is meant to relate. There is also the danger of some feeling that we have taken something of size and substance and broken it into smaller, weaker, parts.

Rather than being a negative thing, I believe that this transition phase is all to the good – that it really is creative, and not merely destructive.

For any Christian, and any church, questions of authority are key. Who has authority, and on what basis? One of the great weaknesses of Protestantism generally, and Evangelicalism specifically, is that without strong ecclesiastical structures it is all too easy for individual opinion to be taken as authoritative, and for there to be an ever increasing splintering of the Church into ever smaller factions. How this can be avoided is an essential question, and one response to the weakness of evangelical ecclesiology is to move towards those ecclesiologies that offer strong structures, grounded in historical practice. (Carl Trueman, of Westminster Seminary, and on the Reformation 21 blog is articulating these issues in an interesting and increasingly vocal manner – worth looking up if you are so inclined.) Basically, this offers three alternatives:

1. Cross the Tiber and become part of Roman Catholicism. This option is surprisingly attractive – Rome speaks with resolute clarity on ethical issues, has global reach, and (for those of us in the West) represents the historical church. However, there are so many aspects of Catholic theology and practice that stick in the Protestant gullet (ultimately finding their expression in how we understand justification) that such a move is not an option.

2. Cross to Constantinople and become Orthodox. Orthodoxy offers all that Catholicism offers, plus. For those of an aesthetic turn it offers more beauty, more transcendence. With no Pope it does not suffer from Rome’s power megalomania. Aspects of its theology are deep, and its deep sense of continuity with the church Fathers is appealing. However, Orthodoxies dogma and arrogance makes it a no-go – the claim to be the ‘unchanging’ church seems ridiculous when those vestments, those icons, that liturgy is held up against New Testament practice.

3. Cross to Geneva and adopt Presbyterianism. This isn’t really an option in the UK, where there isn’t really an orthodox Presbyterian church, but there is much that is attractive about the possibility – clear Reformation doctrine, with an appreciation of pre-Reformation theology, and a clear authority structure of church officers and synod. But the cessationism, and dryness, and commitment to paedobaptism, mean that – again – this is an option not to be embraced.

So, where does that leave us?

In the first century Ignatius elevated the role of bishop (episkopos) over elders (presbyters), with deacons under them. Ignatius was a disciple of the apostle John, so he was as close to the origins of Christianity as it was possible to be. The issues that Ignatius wrestled with were how to maintain unity and guard against heresy in the nascent church. His solution was bishops, and thus the structures of Catholicism and Orthodoxy were born. Ignatius’ intentions were laudable, but he set in motion what I would contend was an unbiblical pattern. Rather than local churches led by elders and following apostolic direction (with all its attendant risks), unity with the bishop became the test of orthodoxy, so that by the third century Cyprian could write, “The bishop is in the church and the church is in the bishop; and if anyone is not with the bishop, that he is not in the church.”

Under this system the role of bishop and elders became associated with OT priests, with deacons operating as “Levites” who served the bishop. By the 4^th century the hierarchical system of bishop, elder, deacon & deaconess was well established, along with five patriarchies in, Rome, Constantinople (the new Rome), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

Ignatius’ aims were noble, but the unintended consequences were a Church hidebound, hierarchical and far distant from what we see in the New Testament.

In a sense, Newfrontiers has faced its own Ignatius moment. It would have been so easy to try and enforce unity and authority by appointing a successor to Terry – a bishop to whom the whole movement would be expected to pledge loyalty. The alternative (the only real alternative) was to do what has happened, and be creatively destructive. Genuine apostolic ministry (by which I mean those gifts that catalyse church planting and global mission) cannot be created by hierarchical authority structures. They need to be given space to appear. This policy is messy and means all kinds of gaps are appearing through which some may fall. Naturally, there are those who are desperately searching around for a ‘bishop’ – but this is a mistake. Instead, they should wait to see what is going to be genuinely apostolic. The only other paths are further fragmentation and pain, or, the road to Rome, Constantinople or Geneva. And these are not paths I would choose to follow.

Of course, in following a course of creative destruction we are, in the end, following the example of our ultimate Founder and Apostle. The Cross looked destructive madness, but without it there would have been no resurrection. Creative destruction is the only way to go. Newfrontiers must die, in order that Newfrontiers might live.

Book Review: When Helping Hurts

When Helping Hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor...and yourself by Steve Corbett & Brian Fickert 

If you are a pastor you will, more or less regularly, have had the experience of someone knocking on the door and asking for money. It might be that you keep a supply of vouchers for the local food bank to hand, or offer to buy energy credits so someone can heat their home. It might be that you just hand over some cash as the easiest way to get them out of your office. But what should you do?

It is also more than likely that you have been involved in organising short term mission teams, or have taken up an offering in response to some disaster in another part of the world. But has your approach been measurably fruitful?

And – thinking more positively – the typical pastor will have a concern to connect with and serve the poor, and motivate his congregation to do the same. Both at home and abroad there is abundant, evident need, and we want to get stuck in and help.

Trouble is, as often as not our efforts can end up causing more harm than good. As Corbett & Fickert point out, since World War II there has been $2.3 trillion of aid invested in the majority world, but 40 per cent of the world’s population still live on less than two dollars per day – which doesn’t exactly represent much bang for buck.

When Helping Hurts spells out the breadth of poverty – that poverty is about our relationship with God, with others, with the rest of creation, and with ourselves, as well as material lack. And this means that those of us who are materially rich are actually poor in other regards, so when we try to fix material poverty we often end up simply imposing our poverty on the materially poor. For Corbett & Fickert the equation looks like this:

Material definitions of poverty + God-complexes of materially non-poor + Feelings of inferiority of materially poor = Harm to both materially poor and non-poor

This means we need a broader definition of poverty alleviation, which “is the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation.” Once we have got this clear we can move on to understanding that “material poverty alleviation is working to reconcile the four foundational relationships so that people can fulfil their callings of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruit of that work.”

The authors then helpfully spell out the difference between relief, rehabilitation and development, and how the materially non-poor typically default to offering relief, when in most situations what is actually needed is rehabilitation and development. So, why give that person at your office door a wad of cash when what they actually need is not relief but help to manage their finances and get into work? Or why send a team to build a house in an African shanty town when there are plenty of people sitting around watching you do it when they could be involved in doing it themselves? Because we default to relief, we end up acting in a paternalistic way, which is bad for the poor, and for us. Instead of acting in this harmful, paternalistic fashion, we should look to work with the poor, utilising the assets they already possess, and helping them to find reconciliation with God, others, creation and themselves.

There were a number of times as I was reading this when I felt a real “Ouch!” as I thought of interactions with the poor I could have handled so much better. The most excoriating chapter is the one on short term missions teams (STM’s), the conclusion of which is basically, “you’d do a lot less harm just sending them some money than sending them a team.” Anyone involved in STM’s should read this. It is a wake-up call.

The book concludes with a very helpful overview of the pros and cons of microfinance, and the ways in which churches can actually make a positive contribution to help the materially poor in our own communities, as well as overseas.

As the authors say, this book is only an introduction to the massive issues of how to best serve the poor, but it is probably the most helpful thing I have read on the subject. It is hard-nosed, yet bursting with genuine compassion for the poor, and reading and applying it thoroughly could lead to some very positive outcomes for all of us. Reading When Helping Hurts might make you feel less guilty about not giving money to the next beggar who asks you; but it might also encourage you to develop strategies that in the long run will cost you more, but be far more satisfying for all concerned. I cannot recommend it enough.

Handled

Over on the what you think matters blog I recently ran a series of posts on how we should respond when the way others treat us is somewhat less than we would desire it to be. I thought it might be helpful to have all these posts in one place (for me at least, if for no one else!), so here it is:

Part 1: Calling out pride

“That wasn’t handled very well…” Anyone who has been in church leadership for longer than a week will have had this said to them.

It can be disheartening when someone says this to you (assuming they you really do have peoples best interests at heart and are not just lazy or indifferent) but it goes with the territory I’m afraid. A large part of being a leader is disappointing people. I’m not sure anyone explained this to me before I entered church leadership, but I have found it to be consistently true. People get disappointed because you do not promote them, or because you promote someone else. People get disappointed because you do not share their enthusiasm for a particular pet project. People get disappointed because they feel you haven’t given them enough attention. The list goes on. Sometimes people get disappointed simply because you are disappointing; which is a disappointing reality!

And of course, often the boot is on the other foot – when those who have leadership over us don’t handle things very well, which also happens on a routine basis.

Another thing I have learned, however, is that it is usually not so much how things were handled that counts, as how we respond. There is not much I can do about how someone has handled an issue, but there is an awful lot I can do about how I respond to it.

Because of my pride (Adam’s root sin that has infected us all) my perception automatically tends to be that if someone does something with which I disagree then they have “handled it badly.” Conversely (and still because of my pride) when someone does something with which I agree I tend to think they have “handled it well.”

Actually, there are four possible scenarios in how this might play out:

1.      A situation is handled well, and I agree with it

2.      A situation is handled badly, and I disagree with it

3.      A situation is handled well, and I disagree with it

4.      A situation is handled badly, and I agree with it

So, perversely, my natural, prideful, response will be to be happy (and feel that something has been handled well) in both scenarios 1 and 4, and I will be unhappy (and feel that something has been handled badly) in scenarios 2 and 3. Which simply illustrates that it is my response that needs attention more than how the thing was handled.

Getting this right requires real maturity, but I have seen even very senior church leaders responding badly. And it requires constant vigilance – just this week I was on the end of a “handling” to which my first (prideful) response was, “that wasn’t handled well,” until I pulled myself back to reality and saw that it was actually my response that needed working on, rather than the way the thing had been handled.

Of course, this is not to say that we should be casual about how we handle things. As pastors our aim should be to handle people and their issues with grace and wisdom – but even the most gifted leader never gets it right all the time, and this should be acknowledged.

So whether you are the one who has disappointed someone else, or is feeling disappointed by someone else, the key thing is how you are handling it.

Repentance and forgiveness in Christ seem to me to be the only appropriate response!

Part 2: The battle for the heart

I have had the enormous privilege of spending the past few days with PJ Smyth and the Godfirst posse in Johannesburg. Being with PJ is always an experience of ‘data dump’ – watching how he leads, and chatting with him, and the actual tangible information download of a bunch of files passed over on a memory stick.

One of the initiatives that PJ has been running with since returning to action post-cancer is the excellent 3DL leadership course. While in Johannesburg I have been looking through some of this material and found particularly juicy the module on gospel-centric counseling. In this material PJ puts the emphasis upon how we respond to the stuff life throws at us – it is about winning the battle for our hearts:

Even in situations where external pressures (such as sickness, bereavement, abuse, abandonment etc.) come to bear on us, God holds us responsible for how our heart responds during the experience (e.g. anger towards God, harbouring fear etc.) and for how our heart responds after the experience (e.g. withdrawal, resentment, self-pity, greed etc.).

This battle for the heart is very practical. It means that we are not excused responsibility when something bad happens to us, but are held responsible for how we respond.

For example, a person may act angry or grumpy in response to lack of sleep. Even if the lack of sleep was external (e.g. side effect of a medication, a crying baby, inconsiderate neighbours etc.) God still holds us accountable for our heart response and any sin that occurs through that anger or grumpiness. While empathy is given and the plans made for the external pressures to be minimized, the responsibility rests firmly at our feet and the person must be counselled to take responsibility for their response to the external pressure.

Of course, this message is easier to take from someone who has demonstrated it with integrity in their own life – and this PJ has certainly done. PJ’s response to cancer (during and after) has been exemplary. He has come through it stronger and more grace-filled, and with a keener edge to his ministry. (If you have not heard it, PJ’s message about his experience of cancer at this year’s TOAM conference is a must listen).


If I am handled badly, or if something bad happens to me, what do I do? My natural response is to fight back, or get into self-pity. A godly response is to lean into Jesus and in him find the grace I need – to win the battle for the heart.
  


Sometimes this heart battle is huge – when someone you thought you could trust does something terribly betraying, or when cancer is suddenly diagnosed. But all of us face multiple smaller-issue scenarios every week. And every time, the question is the same – not so much “Why did this happen?” That question is often unanswerable, and usually un-fixable – but, “How am I going to respond?” Or, put another way, how are you going to handle your heart?

Part 3: Grumbling isn’t the answer!

At a recent Newfrontiers wider leaders gathering the brilliant Phil Moore spoke compellingly about lessons from the life of William Booth. A couple of biblical illustrations Phil used really caught my attention, chiming as they did with things I have been focussing on in terms of the way we handle difficult circumstances.

One example Phil used was what happened to Miriam when she complained to Aaron about their brother Moses (see Numbers 12). This is a familiar story, but the point Phil brought home with fresh clarity was the mundane nature of the incident – Aaron and Miriam were having a family moan, apparently in private, and yet God’s anger was kindled against them. How many of us have had behind-closed-doors moans about those God has set in leadership over us? Or, to drive the point home, are there any of us who haven’t? We might not think these conversations are particularly serious – “We’re just letting off steam” – but God takes them very seriously indeed.

The next example was about Peter getting out of the boat to walk to Jesus (Matthew 14). This is a great story of faith – and of failing faith after Peter took a few steps and then began to sink. The question Phil posed was this: If it hadn’t been stormy would Peter have got out of the boat in first place? Probably not. A tiny boat battered by the storm might not have seemed to offer as much security as walking to Jesus. Or, if it had been calm, perhaps Peter would have simply jumped out of the boat to swim to Jesus, as he did following Jesus’ intervention in a later fishing trip (John 21).

These examples got me thinking again about how I respond to things that happen to me. Maybe there are times when Jesus allows uncomfortable things in our lives in order to compel us to respond in faith and walk towards him. Maybe if everything was plain sailing we would never get out of the boat. And maybe God really does care about the gossipy, negative things we say (even in private, with close friends) about those he has set in spiritual authority over us.

Maybe the way we should respond – even when we feel we have been handled badly – is by trusting Jesus and honouring our leaders. Doing this can be difficult and costly; but on balance I think it is less difficult and costly than getting leprosy or drowning.

Part 4: When right is wrong

When it comes to interpersonal conflict we tend to be quick to apportion blame, say “that wasn’t handled well” and feel a measure of resentment towards the other person. As we have seen already, the key thing is how we respond to the inevitable experience of being badly handled. What happens to us is often of less significance than how we respond. Will we win the battle for the heart, or give into the idol of pride and fight back?

The reality is that in any conflict there is often blame on both sides. An instructive biblical example of this is the encounter between Jacob and Laban recorded in Genesis 31. Let’s work through it verse by verse and see how this plays out, in terms of who was “right” and who “wrong”:

Verses 1-2 Laban is in the wrong as he is resentful towards Jacob.

Verse 3 Jacob is in the right, because he hears God’s voice commanding him to return to Canaan.

Verses 4-16 Jacob is in the wrong because he badmouths Laban, and encourages Rachel and Leah to do the same.

Verses 17-21 Jacob is in the wrong because he lives up to his name and ‘tricks’ Laban, by running away from the situation, with Rachel stealing Laban’s household gods to boot. (Whether or not Jacob knew Rachel had done this is not made clear. And we needn’t get into the details here of all concerned being wrong in having household gods in the first place!)

Verses 22-30 Laban is in the right this time. He sets off in pursuit of Jacob, but then heeds God’s warning about how he should speak to Jacob.

Verses 31-32 Jacob is in the right when he admits his error and says he acted out of fear.

Verses 33-35 Rachel is in the wrong this time as she lies to her father about ‘having her period’ and hides his gods in the saddlebag on which she sits.

Verses 36-42 Jacob is in the wrong – because Laban does not find what he has accused Jacob of stealing, Jacob sees the opportunity to get things off his chest and lets Laban have it with both barrels. There is truth in his argument, but his approach is wrong!

Verses 43-54 Laban is in the right as he recognizes he has to let Jacob go, and initiates a covenant between them. Jacob also then gets things right as he responds to Laban’s initiative, and breaks bread with him.

Verse 55 Laban is in the right as he blesses his children and grandchildren and takes his leave.

Neither Jacob nor Laban come out of this encounter particularly well. To a degree, they are both right, but the overall picture is of them both being wrong. Neither of them handle things very well, and it is only by the grace of God that the story concludes with them having dinner together rather than rolling in the dust punching each others lights out. (Which makes it all the more poignant that in the next chapter we find Jacob wrestling with God.)

I think the big lesson from this episode is to be alert to the fact that we might not be as right as we think we are. I’m sure that both Jacob and Laban felt themselves completely justified in their thoughts and actions (Jacob: “Twenty years I’ve worked for you, and got nothing but grief.” Laban: “You’re loaded man – and it’s all my stuff that you’re loaded with!”).

The thing is, they were both right, and both wrong, and fighting about it wasn’t going to achieve anything. Both of them could have handled the situation – and responded to it – a whole lot better. And in that, there must be a lesson for us all.

Part 5: Don’t handle it like a fool

I recently heard Malcolm Kayes speak from 1 Samuel 25 about David, Nabal and Abigail as models of how we respond to events, and found it so helpful I want to recap it here:

“I don’t suffer fools gladly…”

Rather sadly, Nabal’s parents had named him ‘fool’, for that is what Nabal means. Even more sadly, Nabal lived up to his name. He clearly had ability, as he had managed to accumulate considerable wealth, but he was not a popular or pleasant man. David and his men had kept guard over Nabal’s shepherds when they were out in the wilds with their flocks, but Nabal had no interest in showing reciprocal respect towards David. Nabal was the kind of man who says, “I’m not going to help him – I’ve worked for what I’ve got. Why should I help that waster? Let him go and get a proper job.”

When David’s request for help came, Nabal told him to get lost.

“I don’t deserve to be treated like that…”

David was not the kind of man to take an insult lying down. He tells his men to strap on their swords, and marches off to slit Nabal’s throat. David felt complete justification about this – Nabal had it coming.

It is interesting that this story comes immediately after the account of David sparing Saul’s life. When David had Saul at his mercy he did not lay a finger on him, and was even consumed with guilt at cutting off a corner of Saul’s robe. But an insult from Nabal and David is ready to start a slaughter.

Sometimes it is easier to respond righteously in the face of the big test than it is to a smaller test. We might behave with nobility when something huge happens to us, but then fly off the handle at the smaller stuff. This is like the man who handles redundancy with dignity, but then gets into a fury when another driver cuts him up. What it reveals is that there is some heart work that still needs to be done.

“I’ll respond with grace…”

In contrast to the foolish Nabal and the hot-heated David, Abigail is a model of gracious action. She compensates for her husbands arrogant folly by making arrangements for David to receive a generous gift; she prevents David from taking the law into his own hands and becoming guilty of shedding blood by flattering and charming him.

Not only does Abigail respond to a very difficult situation with incredible wisdom, but she acts selflessly. It is easy to imagine that the prospect of David chopping off Nabal’s head might be attractive to Abigail. It could be her way out of what was probably a pretty ugly marriage. But she doesn’t do this. Even when she gets back home from placating David, Abigail finds things worse rather than better with Nabal drunk and disorderly. But rather than look for a way out of a difficult situation Abigail remains faithful.

How do you handle it?

Each of us has the potential to act like Nabal – to be selfish and thoughtless and foolish. In our different ways we can find ourselves looking down on other people and making wrong judgements about them.

Each of us also has the potential to act like David – taking hot-headed exception to the sleights (real or imagined) that others throw our way.

Abigail is a better model of godly response here. Rather than fighting her own corner or running away in fear, she faces a difficult situation head on and makes wise choices that result in a good outcome. Abigail is a wonderful example of how to handle a handling. May we go and do likewise.