I was talking with a lady who had been a missionary for forty years, and I noticed that she had exceptionally lovely hands. "Has anyone ever told you your hands are beautiful?'' I asked. The dear soul was so flustered one might have thought I had committed an indecency. She looked at her hands in amazement.
"Why . . . why no. I don't think anyone ever has!'' But she saw that I meant it, and she had the grace to hear the truth. She said thank you.
"Tell it like it is," is the watchword today. But suppose it's lovely? Suppose it's actually beautiful? C. S. Lewis said that the most fatal of all nonconductors is embarrassment. It seems to me that life is all too short to let embarrassment deprive us and our friends of the pleasure of telling the happy truth. Suppose the boy who does your lawn does it fast, trims it perfectly, and takes care of the tools? Suppose the clerk who waits on you happens to be the most gracious one you've ever encountered? Suppose even that your husband--when you stop for once to look at him, to think about him as a person and as a man--seems to you to be the best man you know?
Tell them.
Tell them now.
-----------Elisabeth Eliott
Thank you for posting this. My wife just commented when I read it to her: "How many marriages could be saved if people just learned to do that?"
I'll echo it. Tell them! Tell them now! This is one case where preaching the gospel of Christ means using words!