Respect (2 min vid + text)

It doesn’t take much.

But it means everything.

How do we treat people when we meet them?

What is important to others should automatically become important to us.

Watch our two minute video (full text below).

Everyone deserves respect. All we need do, is give it.

Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Snappy Goat

FULL TEXT:

“I know that’s right.” This is one of Dwayne’s favorite statements of agreement. Dwayne is a maintenance worker in one of the places where I teach. I get to the campus early to set up my classroom, he cleans my room an hour ahead of my class.

In our first meeting, we began to chat about life and interests. I have a love of cool jazz and happened to be playing it when we met for the first time. We began to compare our favorites. Dwayne introduced me to Paul Hardcastle. So every morning when Dwayne came in to sanitize the room, tunes from Paul Hardcastle wafted through the air.

Our discussion of jazz, began to intersect with life. I said, “I am especially interested in jazz because its origins came from Negro Spirituals.” That’s when I found out Dwayne is a Christian. Our connection with music led us to a connection with life, with religious sensibilities, with our common belief system, with each other.

The last day of the semester, I told Dwayne I was being moved to another classroom. Both of us were sad. We had grown in our friendship over the semester, our twice-a-week talks about life. We gave each other a bro-hug.

Important human lessons were reaffirmed. Respect is the starting line for any friendship. Sharing is better than taking, giving is better than getting. Who someone is should always be more important than what someone does. There are no trivial encounters, there are no insignificant conversations. Caring for others – their interests, their lives – costs us very little and means so much.

And guess what? I just found out that I have been reassigned to my old room.

I can’t wait to see my friend again.

And I can hear Dwayne’s response, “I know that’s right.”

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.