Search Results for: blog making snap judgments

Meet a Families.com Blogger – Dale Harcombe!

Today we are joined by the incomparable Dale Harcombe, who shares her taste in movies with me. Dale, thanks for chatting with me today. How long have you blogged for Families.com? Since mid-May 2007. I started just after coming back from Alpha 2 Omega, a Christian writers’ convention in Brisbane, Queensland. What topics do you blog about? At this stage Christian, though it seems to encompass different areas of life, since being a Christian affects all of living. What is your favorite thing about blogging for Families.com? I like the feeling of commmunity and interaction. Also when people let me … Continue reading →

Making Snap Judgments

How often do you judge others by appearances and first encounters with them? Because we’re going to be leaving soon and moving to a new area, I’ve been thinking a lot about the prospect of meeting new people. I know an inherited trait I have is that I am always been quick to sum people up and form judgments about others. Years ago, when I became a leader at a BSF interdenominational bible study group, I had one woman come into the group. Sad to say my first impression was, ‘this woman is a nut.’ Over time, the Lord showed … Continue reading →

It Makes You Think

I love TV shows and books that make me think. Last night we watched Boston Legal. Apart from the wacky sense of humor that permeates David E. Kelley shows, one of the reasons I like this show is because it is concerned with the law and makes me think. Legal shows always fascinate me. It also makes me think about things I might not otherwise think about. It may be only a TV script and not an actual case, but it’s enough to start the brain ticking over. Take the episode we watched where Alan Shore was to go before … Continue reading →

Welcome Or Not – part 2

Supposing someone walks into your church. They are not dressed the way people in your church normally dress. In fact, as you look at them you, can’t help yourself from making a snap judgment. They look like a bit of a loser. Here is a helpful article that reminds us not to make those snap judgments and yes, I admit to having been guilty of them myself at times. We need to show love to those who enter our churches. Why? Because that’s what Jesus did. Jesus never worried about whether people were, what society would call, losers. Some of … Continue reading →

Watch out for Premature Judgment

I confess that it is in my nature to be quick-to-judge. Not just as parent, but in other aspects of my life as well. Even though I have spent a lifetime working on this challenging personal reality, I still come up against the quick and premature judgment when I am dealing with my children all the time. Learning how to take a step back and gather the facts before passing judgment can be an incredibly important element in any parent’s tool box. Parenting is such a gut-reaction and emotional endeavor for so many of us—it can be tough to be … Continue reading →

How to Make a Friend

Yesterday we looked at how easily we can fall into laziness maintaining friendships. This prompted me to think more about friends. What makes people connect and move from acquaintances to become friends? You might want to answer this question in the forum. The biggest difference we have found since coming to our current church, is we have made not acquaintances but friends, friends we will one day share eternity with. So how can you make friends not acquaintances? Some ideas I came up with are: Taking time to listen Too often people don’t listen but are waiting to get their … Continue reading →

I’d Never Do That!

Have you ever watched people yelling at their kids or arguing with their spouse, in a public place and thought I’d never do that? Or seen someone react to a generous offer by brushing the person’s generosity aside with a curt ‘No, I’m okay,’ and think I’d never do that? Or hear someone pay a compliment to another and hear it brushed aside by the pious comment, ‘It’s the Lord doing it.’ Do you ever see Christians in the news for all the wrong reasons as mentioned in the blog I read this morning about ‘Christians behaving badly’ and think … Continue reading →

What to do Instead of Jumping to Conclusions

Are you the sort of parent who weighs all the possibilities before making a decision or are you someone who has a tendency to jump to conclusions before taking in all the facts? I can be a bit impetuous but my experiences as a parent have actually been instrumental in teaching me how to focus and hold off on my conclusions until I at least have some of the facts. While parenting often requires that we make snap judgments and decisions, we can lose credibility and authority with our children if we are doing it too often and not really … Continue reading →

Examples of Encouragment

Yesterday I wrote about words of encouragement. Yesterday and today, I had several examples of that and I know what a difference that encouragement has made to the start of my day. Two were regarding my writing. The first was an initial response from an experienced fellow writer and reader regarding the new manuscript I’m working on, which I’m looking forward to getting more detailed feedback on at the SCBWI conference in Sydney next month. The second was from a group of Australian children’s writers that I belong to, asking some questions about the structure of my novel due to … Continue reading →

A Different Shape

I’ve always looked at Christmas trees in American films and thought how different they are to the type of pines we usually have in Australia as Christmas trees. But since we’ve moved to the South Coast I’ve discovered the pines used for Christmas trees here are different to the trees we had each year in Sydney and in Orange. One year while in Orange, we visited a Christmas tree farm and chopped down a tree – a New Zealand Radiata Pine, the woman who owned the tree farm informed me. Like all writers the experience wasn’t wasted, as I used … Continue reading →