“Settle down, kids,” I heard myself yell above the din. I felt like I had tumbled into a Charles Dickens novel, visiting the holiday celebration with Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past where there were “not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty!”

There were actually only five of them, but somehow the noise level in my sister’s kitchen made it seem like there were dozens of new little nieces and nephews, each reacting out of the bad habits they’d learned during too much time in foster care. And I definitely hadn’t joined a Dickensian Christmas ball; rather, I had flown to Ohio to stay with my sister while her husband was on a ministry trip in a spiritually dark place in Asia. These weeks when their dad was battling darkness always seemed to bring out the worst behavior in the kids.

Pulling aside the oldest child in this sibling group, I asked Charles to think of something nice he could say to his sister instead of continuing the argument.

I was met with a blank stare.

I told my nephew that God wants us to encourage each other every single day, as long as it’s still called Today. “And guess what?” I continued. “As soon as Today becomes Tomorrow, it’s already Today again!” I chuckled to myself when I saw Charles’ blank stare morph into a puzzled expression as he tried to figure out the probability of Today never really becoming Tomorrow.

But what about me? When faced with a frustrating interpersonal situation will I, like my new nieces and nephews, react from the bad habits that I’ve allowed to creep into my life, or will I choose the road of encouragement? And when I do share words of encouragement, will I pat myself on the back for my good deed before settling back into my normal routine, or will I remember that God exhorts us to continue encouraging each other as long as it is called “Today?”

May God help me to embrace the path of encouragement, and to never forget that by the time tomorrow rolls around, it’s already today again.