Thursday's Thought: Modesty

Modesty is an attitude. It just has a tendency to express itself in the way you dress.

Reality Check: If You Were a Garden

If you were a garden, what kind of garden would you be?

Would you be a a welcome, restful retreat?

Would you be a colorful cottage garden ~ casual, friendly, and full of surprises?

Would you be a formal garden ~ symmetrical, predictable, sophisticated, regal?

Would you be sunny, cheerful, and fragrant?

Would you be chaotic, a catchall of color and form?

Full of weeds, briers, and thistles?

Would your plants be diseased and bug-eaten?

Think of yourself as a garden. What kind would you be in terms of your temperament, personality, character, appearance, manners, association with others, activities, behavior, etc. How would you describe yourself, as a garden?

If you were a garden what experience would others (including God) have as they visited your garden? Would you be ashamed to have others visit this garden ~ and inspect it closely?

Grab a few gardening books (with lots of pictures), or go walking through some gardens, and look at yourself while you look at them.

Think about this too: what kind of garden would you like to be?

Thoughts from Yesteryear: Good Manners

Good manners lead us to avoid all practices which offend the taste of others; all unnecessary violations of the conventional rules of propriety; all rude and disrespectful language and deportment; and all remarks which would tend to wound the feelings of others.

~ American Woman's Home, chapter 15, Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe.