Season & Savor: Benefit of the Doubt

Welcome to Season & Savor Sunday — because feeding our bodies is not enough.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7 (ESV)

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure & privacy policy.

---

There’s a lesson that keeps circling back to me. Not because I’ve mastered it. Because apparently I haven’t.

This is one of those.

When our boys were younger, there were a couple of friends in their circle I didn’t love. I’ll just be honest about that. I had concerns. I saw behaviors I didn’t like, influences I didn’t trust. I made up my mind about them. Filed them away. Labeled them, quietly, in the way moms do when they’re worried and don’t quite know what to do with it.

I didn’t run them off. I didn’t forbid anything dramatically. I just prayed and waited, and eventually, the way these things sometimes go, the friendships faded on their own. I won’t pretend I wasn’t relieved.

And that was that. Or so I thought.

---

Years later, those same boys came back into our lives. And I was not prepared for who they had become.

They were good. Really, genuinely good young men. The kind you actually enjoy being around, the kind you find yourself rooting for. I liked them. A lot.

It hit me like a two-by-four, which, if you know me, that’s what it usually takes to get my attention. I blame it on being dropped, falling, and a lot of trauma to my noggin’ over the years! Or it could just be because I’m stubborn, stiff-necked. Moses had a word for people like me.

Because here’s the thought that stopped me cold: I had changed. I had grown. Why on earth did I think they couldn’t? Why would I not give them the benefit of the doubt!

Hello.

The Bible has something to say about this, and I’ve been sitting with the Beatitudes lately, so it hit me in a fresh way. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7. I had not been merciful in my heart toward those boys, not really. I’d been cautious, maybe even fair by some measure, but merciful? Giving them the full benefit of what they might become? No. I had filed them away and quietly closed the drawer.

Proverbs 18:13 says it plainly: “To answer before listening, that is folly and shame.” (NIV) I had answered before listening. I just did it silently, where no one could call me on it.

---

What I did next wasn’t a big, dramatic apology. I didn’t sit them down and say, “Hey, I misjudged you when you were thirteen, I’m sorry.” I probably should have, but it was quieter than that. I just started showing up differently. I spoke into their lives. Told them what I saw in them, who they were becoming, what kind of men they were turning into. I talked with their moms. I said the things out loud that I should have been holding open as a possibility all along.

James puts it this way, and the Message version is the one that gets me every time: “Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.” James 1:19-20 (MSG). I had done it backward. I’d led with my conclusions and let my ears come in a distant last.

---

Now, I want to be careful here, because I’m not saying every story ends this way. Some people you do need to walk away from (see my post on Friendship: Part 3). Some relationships ask more than you have, and protecting yourself or your kids is not a failure of mercy.

I’m not talking about the relationships that are genuinely harmful. You know the difference. This is about the ones where you just quietly stopped believing in someone, and maybe it’s time to look again.

But before you close that file, maybe sit with this: “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NLT). That’s not a description of something that comes naturally. That’s something we grow into, slowly, with a lot of two-by-fours along the way.

---

So here’s the question I’m leaving with you this Sunday, the one I had to ask myself:

Whose file have you not updated lately?

Who did you make up your mind about a long time ago, and just never went back to check? It might be someone who hurt you. A friend who let you down. A kid who was heading in the wrong direction. A family member you quietly wrote off or who wrote you off.

People change. You know this because you have changed. Give them what you’d want someone to give you.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32 (ESV)

Mercy given. Mercy returned. Sometimes that’s exactly how it works.

---

Until next Sunday, friend. Season well, savor deeply.

~ With grace at the table, and beyond

I read and respond to every email and comment, and I’m so thankful for each of you who comes back week after week. It means more than you know when you make my recipes and share your thoughts 💚