One of the greats

So my little jaunt to Tennessee last week took me to hear the the Rev. Fred Craddock, Ph.D., named one of the best 12 living preachers by Newsweek.
What an amazing storyteller. (All great preachers are great storytellers.) This was a rich experience for me.
Recognizing this is a health and fitness blog and not my subject of daily fare (faith), I'll repeat a story which he told. Though applicable to faith communities, it also helped remind me not to make assumptions about people so quickly. Which could serve us all to be kinder, gentler people. Which is related to mental health, yes?
In this particular lecture, Craddock was talking about guest preaching. Because he has mainly been a seminary professor at Emory University, he's not had a pulpit to call home. The best preachers, he reminded us, are pastors; their words come from their knowledge of what's going on in the lives of the pews. So it's best, if you're a guest preacher, not to comment on something gone awry before you preach. Such as the woman who got up to sing a solo before his sermon. She'd get to a certain verse and her voice would crack. The piano player would stop and they'd start again. Same thing. Then same thing a third time. The woman left the sanctuary and he could hear the car starting and pulling away.
The temptation is to get up in the pulpit directly after something like that and say, "Bless her heart, well she tried. Her heart was in the right place." You just get up and give your lesson, ignoring the faux pas.
Then he found out her father had killed himself two days before.
Lesson: You never know what someone's going through. Don't make assumptions because you will most often be wrong. Food for thought, yes?