Settlement before Sundown – Sunday, November 01, 1959
Somewhere there is a sentence which says in substance: “Make an enemy, and you see him everywhere.”1 If we have ever walked out of our way to avoid speaking to someone, we no doubt remember how uncomfortable we were. The more people we feel we have to avoid, the more ill at case we are.
The more unsettled differences we have, the fewer places we feel free to go. If we have an unsettled quarrel with a neighbor, we probably feel uncomfortable and self-conscious in passing his place. If we have an unsettled misunderstanding with someone in our own family, we likely don’t feel as comfortable in the same house as we could, he who has an unsettled quarrel is never quite at ease inside, and he who isn’t at ease inside cannot work as well or feel as well or be at his best.
Our feelings against others cramp our own activities. And for this reason, and for many others, a fair and forthright clearing of the atmosphere is so much to be preferred to dragging out our differences. We recall this sentence from one of the epistles of Paul: “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”2
Certainly, we’d all be happier if each day’s differences could be settled by sundown—because this business of brooding, this fermenting inside, is a deadly killer of human happiness. Sometimes people foolishly go along for years avoiding each other.
Their estrangement may date back to some almost forgotten offense. But they may have persisted so long in injured silence that it is embarrassing for either to break it. But the best way to settle a misunderstanding is to settle it—even at the price of a little pride—even if we don’t f eel that we were at fault—or that it is rightly our place to make the first move.
Everyone is cramped and uncomfortable in the presence of those who have unreconciled differences. And making the first move isn’t always altogether a question of being magnanimous. It is in our own interest to have misunderstandings cleared up, so that we can be at ease in our own home, in our own town, or where we work, or in our own thoughts—and not have to feel that there are those we’d rather not meet face to face.
There is much to be said for settlement before sundown—for if we have an enemy, it is likely to seem that we see him everywhere. *
* Revised
1 Source Unknown
2 Ephesians 4:26
November 01, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,576