REMOVE THAT BEAM

Matthew 7:4
How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye?
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When asked what she thinks about an issue where her brother is involved, a Filipina beauty queen exclaimed, “Don’t judge my brother, he is not a book!” And both print and broadcast media would talk about this for days and even weeks. In effect, she was judged as “brainless beauty”.

The act of judgment is an act of pride. Judging others is an act of monumental pride - enormous pride, stupendous pride, galling, astonishing, fantastic pride. When you render judgment on another, you have taken upon yourself an awesome responsibility for making the correct judgment. Because, after all, your judgment is not necessary.

Father, why is it easy for us to judge another and yet always find it hard to see our own limitations, our own fault, “the beam in our own eye” (Mat 7:4)? I have done my own share of premature judging myself, Oh Lord. And what’s even worst, is I even judged people who are total strangers to me! – the lady who walks with an older man (another woman?), a teenager with a long hair and an earring in his nose (a drug addict?), a family of eight (don’t they have any other thing to do?), a blind beggar (thinking he must be faking it!)… “Judge not, that ye be not judged!”

Oh Lord, I know that other people judge me also, and most of the time, negatively. But this is not a reason for me to do the same. It doesn’t matter now what others call me, call us. How we live our lives before You and following Your desires, is the only thing that matters. It is the only true measure of how I will be judged when I come face-to-face with You in heaven.

“Do not judge, so you won’t be judged
For everything you say against others, will be the basis
Of how the Father will measure and judge you”

Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.