By David ReayThursday 30 Jan 2014LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Luke 6:41-42
41 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? 42 How can you think of saying,’Friend,let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. (NLT)
We are to become so much more concerned with assessing the state of our own heart and much less concerned with assessing the state of others’ hearts. Jesus reminds us that we are not able to help others with their life issues if we are not hard at work on our own. Too often we busy ourselves with making judgments about others and blithely ignore our own failings. Indeed,being preoccupied with the failings of others can be a means by which we resolve not to deal with our own.
We can never know enough about another person’s interior life journey to make snap judgments about them. If we did know their secret history,perhaps we would be kinder and less harsh in our assessments of them. If we were able to grasp what God is doing in them and through them,the plans he had for them,then we would dare not consign them to the scrapheap of failed humanity.
Ultimately,every other person is a mystery. We can never imagine we have figured them out,or fully grasped their past or present or possible futures. We can only wait and watch to see what God cares to do with them and what they care to do with God. And we can only examine our own selves,still much a mystery but a self for which we have responsibility.
In doing so,we leave judgement to the one and only Judge.
Blessings
David Reay