I am grateful for the honor and the privilege to walk alongside of those who weep and those who rejoice. Have you ever considered that when you have people in your life, or on the fringes of your life, who are weeping and you are invited to weep on their behalf that it is an honor? It is a sacred thing to be invited into someones struggles, pain, or grief and to weep with them and for them. On the other side is the same kind of honor to be invited to rejoice with those who are rejoicing. It is just as sacred to participate in that. And when the privilege to weep and rejoice with and for others happens on the same day it can be bittersweet and yet I am filled with gratitude that I am invited into that intimate part of people's lives. I hope, I pray, that I never take that honor for granted but I always treat it with the gratitude I feel today.
There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.
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