Like most children, ours enjoyed drawing and coloring. At three-and-a-half, our son created a masterpiece on a large portion of our living room wall. These were oil based crayons and only went completely away by painting over them. When my sweetheart and I discussed the problem with our artist son, he felt bad and did his best to help us spread a fresh coat over the area.

A week or so later, he did it a second time on the same wall. He was so sad and embarrassed he cried, shrugged his little shoulders, and said he wasn't sure why he had done it, but he would surely never repeat the petty crime. Hoping it would help motivate him to be true to his word, we explained if it happened again he would go to bed early and without supper. He loved both our evening family time and food. He solemnly promised to restrict his canvas.

About a week later, I arrived home to find his biggest masterpiece ever on the same wall. It was the end of an especially trying day for me and I had been looking forward to the safe haven of our home. I allowed this incident to become the focal point of all the abuse and pressure I had received that day. In an angry and insulting voice, I called our young friend to stand before the wall with me.

When he came in he was already crying, but I was so angry it hardly touched my hardened heart. After all, he had cried the last two times, hadn't he? That didn't seem to affect his ability to keep the edict we had issued and prevent us from having to once again move the furniture and repaint the wall.

I asked him the silliest of questions. Why had he done this? Didn't he remember what we had talked about the prior two times? Did he know what was going to happen now? I knew our son was aware of the answers to these questions. The truth was our little friend was very bright. He loved us and didn't color on the wall to aggravate our relationship. He remembered it was wrong. There were other things that momentarily provoked his creative outburst.

I asked him those questions in an angry, loud voice, being three times his height and perhaps four times his weight. I further stripped him of his dignity and self respect, falsely relying on this abuse of my already humble friend to somehow make me feel better. It did not.

I sent him to his room for the evening and not long after was at our table with the rest of our atypically quiet family for dinner. I do not recall who offered thanks for our food before we began dinner, but I clearly remember my conscience being seared as soon as I bowed my head.

Immediately, I knew it was not acceptable that I was eating and our son was not. I remember considering what I should do and it coming clear to me, “I was in prison and ye visited me.” I told my wife and our other children I wouldn't be eating and excused myself from the table.

I entered his room and sat next to our son on his bed. He was still sniffing a little and his expression revealed he thought I had come to expand his embarrassment. I was quiet for a moment, collecting my thoughts. I knew what I was supposed to do and say.

I began to explain to him that it was a much greater sin to yell at someone and humiliate him than it was to color on a wall. There in our son's room, me so huge and him so small, I saw more clearly our relationship, and my heart swelled wide with remorse at my selfish and destructive actions. I confessed that the kind of damage for which I was responsible was much harder to clean up and sometimes almost impossible to be made right again. Deeply humble and ashamed, I told him I was sorry.

Our little lad responded by trying to explain to me that he deserved to be yelled at, and that his crime justified such abuse. It was a terrible indictment of his experiences with my prior mistreatment and pierced me to my core.

I assured him that neither he nor anyone deserved such cruel treatment. I explained that yelling was always evil, one of the meanest expressions of selfishness, and again asked if he would forgive me.

He threw his tiny arms around me, and with a fiercely honest child's passion, told me he loved me, and to my tender astonishment, that I was the best dad ever. He hesitantly moved away from me so he could look in my face. I could tell he had something to say that was important to him but was choking the words. Then they simply tumbled out. “Can you forgive me?”

I folded my little friend into my bosom and wished I could express to him the feelings in my soul. He was innocent, sweet, and lovely before God. There was only one person in the room who needed serious correction. I was determined to have learned the most important lesson. Yes, I told him. All was forgiven. We would paint the wall together, with mom. All was well.

We spent the evening together, playing with action figures and then reading until he fell asleep. To his queries of wasn't I going to go eat and didn't I want to go out with the family, I said assuredly I could not eat if he didn't and that I wanted to stay and keep him company so he wouldn't be lonely.

I didn't really miss dinner and it was one of the most contented nights I have ever had. As is so often the case with giving and receiving, I was more blessed in the giving than our son.

I do not recall if he ever colored on a wall after that. But if he resisted future temptations, I like to think it wasn't for fear of what would happen that persuaded him, but his concern that his dad would miss his dinner.

Taking and Losing

The first kernel of wisdom I took away from this experience was our happiness is reliant upon how we treat others and they treat us. To the degree we love and are loved by those in our lives we are happy; and to the degree these relationships are troubled we are grieved.

Because we want to be loved and dispel all contention from our lives, it is good for us to know we hold the keys for our own peace, and largely for how others feel for us.

Perhaps the clearest most riveting scriptural counsel on relationships is found in The Sermon on the Mount, in the final 11 verses of Matthew 5, beginning with verse 38. The Lord gives the lesser relationship law first, which most of those listening to Him at the time were living — and most of us today are living.

He established, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

The Lord points to the inescapable consequences that when someone takes from us, we suffer loss. This solidly plants within us the passion to take from them, seeking to quell the sting of our loss. Because this is natural and common among all people, we feel justified in taking whenever we lose. After all, they took from us first.

However, the unavoidable result of us taking from another person to compensate for our loss, is the person we take from then loses. Though he clearly started it, his loss is nonetheless real and naturally awakens within him the desire to take from us or from someone else to compensate for that loss. When he does this, we, or someone else loses and will seek to take from another to compensate for this new loss.

Taking-and-losing is the first half of what could rightly be referred to as The Law of Relationships. It is the natural course of mortal passion and most of our days are wearily packed with “take-and-lose” exchanges.

Someone may cast a negative expression at us, derogatorily comment to us or someone else about us, or cut us off in traffic. Someone may steal by diverse means our friend, spouse, children, money, car, or house. There are thousands of take and lose experiences, many of which we unavoidably experience while still children.

There can be some instant satisfaction in taking from another to compensate for having lost. But the thin savor will soon turn sour and cannot yield us happiness.

Taking and losing is downward spiraling and expansively perpetuates sorrow and contention. It is the bulwark of Babylon and the enemy of Heaven.

The Giver of Life continues, “But I say unto you that ye resist not evil.”

Here the Master counsels that taking when we lose may feel natural and the world may justify our response, but it is evil and we should refuse the inclination to “resist” — to push or fight against something pushing us. The Lord counsels us to not become mired in the evil bog that is the world's taking-and-losing economy.

Giving and Receiving

In fact, if we will follow the Lamb, refusing the temptation to take when we suffer loss is not enough. Rather, the Lord reveals it is when we give to those who take from us that we are about Heaven's work — and our own contentious inclinations will turn to peace.

Anticipating our tendency to seek the least requirements for living this redemptive relationship law, the Lord gives three examples so fierce and broad that they leave us little room for exemptions. Giving is imbedded in each example as the key to our peace and happiness:

Those gathered on the mount must have been, as well as we today, stunned into quiet reflection as to what would happen if we gave our other cheek, our cloke or another mile to such rude, affrontive usurpers.

The Master assures us giving awakens just as sure and powerful reaction in the receiver as taking does in the loser. When we receive, we gain; and in this expansion we are naturally, consistently motivated to give to whomever gave to us, as well as to others.

We may be given a smile, an embrace, a listening ear, food, transportation, clothing, or shelter. Regardless how slight or great the gift, in receiving our natures change. We are empowered to give, to share the good. We may pass on a smile, place our hand on a drooping shoulder, write someone a gracious note, bring someone into our home, or feed or clothe someone. No matter the gift, the receiver is enlivened with the spirit of giving.

Just as taking-and-losing are downward spiraling, leading to death, darkness, and sadness, so giving-and-receiving are upward spiraling, leading to life, light, and happiness.

Giving changes the temperament of both receiver and giver, and decimates taking's negative power.

The Lord's Challenge to Become a Peacemaker

The Good Shepherd sets forward that not only will we improve our relationships with everyone in our reach, but also, unavoidably, with Him.

We should expect following the Redeemer's example to initially be challenging and feel contrary to our base temperament. However, as we allow our divine natures full sway in our lives, we will discover abundant and joyous blessings purely flowing into us. We will know by our pleasant experience this is the easiest path to walk. The Lord has prepared us to live without contention, and to be filled with serenity and joy unspeakable.

When I came home to my son after experiencing a day of intense “loses,” I was still bumping along the world's shabby low road of looking for opportunities to take, compensating for those loses. Had I hearkened to the Master's invitation to give when suffering loss, I would have blessed the lives of those who took, and would have healed my own soul sufficient to have not been a taker of my son's and my family's peace.

May we exercise the power given us to love, rescue, and forgive. In so doing, we will build our lives, as houses, upon the rock of our Redeemer. For, just as occurred in His perfect life, in each of our lives the rain will surely descend, the floods come, and the winds inescapably blow and beat upon us. But if we not only hear, but also live according to the Master's invitations to respond by giving, lifting and blessing, we shall stand, full of Heaven's peace, for we will be built upon that rock which cannot fail.