This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question was being put to you. So you must think, what is the lord asking me in this moment, in this situation. If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think as it were, this is an emissary sent from the lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as things would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights.

p. 124, Gilead, Marilynne Robinson.