Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled, Grace Now, was written by Anne Cetus.

We hurried to a fast food restaurant to have lunch together on my friend Jerry's short work break.

Arriving at the door about the same time, six young men got inside just in front of us.

Knowing we didn't have much time to spare, we grumbled inwardly.

They stood as a group at both registers to be sure each of them could order first.

Then I heard Jerry whisper to herself, show grace now.

Wow. Sure, letting us go first would have been nice, but what a great reminder to think of

others' needs and desires, and not only my own. The Bible teaches that love is patient, kind, and unselfish.

It's not easily angered. It often prefers others' welfare and satisfaction and advantage to its

own, wrote commentator Matthew Henry of this love.

God's kind of love thinks of others first.

In a world where many of us are easily irritated,

we frequently have occasion to ask God for help and the grace to choose to be patient with others and to be kind.

Proverbs 1911 adds, a person's wisdom yields patience.

It is to one's glory to overlook an offense. That's the kind of loving action that brings honor to God, and he might even use it to bring thoughts of his love to others.

With God's strength, let's take every opportunity to show grace now.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from 1 Corinthians chapter 13,

verses 4 through 13.

Love is patient. Love is kind.

It does not envy.

It does not boast.

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