Good morning and happy Saturday. I hope that you had a good week. Btw, this email does not contain any pumpkin spice. I just thought that since everything else advertises that this time of year that it might make someone remotely interested in reading this rambling.
The other day I was driving past a line of cars in the drive thru at a less than extraordinary dining establishment. As I motored my way passed the hungry consumers awaiting their scrumptious culinary delights, one car apparently was through waiting. Without warning, signals or any other indication, the driver turned the wheel and lurched out of line nearly hitting my miniature replica of a real car. Fortunately, I saw her in time and stopped abruptly. At that point, she realized the error of her ways and gave me one of those sheepish looks and a slight wave as to say, “oops, I didn’t look before I blundered out into traffic.” In reality, the entire thing was a non-event. No cars were damaged, no loss of life or limb. What did make the thing rather ironic was the sticker she had in her rear window. It said, “Look twice save lives.” I thought that was kind of funny since she didn’t look once before she pulled out. Honestly, I don’t want to be too hard on her since I often find myself blundering through life doing things without thinking, looking, etc.
As I thought about it, it reminds me a bit of life right now. It is easy to suggest or tell others what they ought to be doing, like looking before running someone over, but it is sometimes hard to remember to do it ourselves. If anyone thinks it is easy to be consistent in all areas of life at all times must have found a secret that I haven’t. I do know that there are a lot of people out there that only seem to point out what is wrong with others. It seems like the whole society is embroiled in attacking one another. In fact, it has become the national pastime. It is really a sad time in society right now.
As I was thinking about this, I thought about something that Jesus said in Matthew 7.
3 Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye?4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? 5 Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Before we spend our time criticizing everyone and everything around us, let’s hit the pause button (post, tweet, send), and evaluate if we are living according to the standards we profess. Obviously, there are a lot of people in this world that are doing things and promoting things that are contrary to God’s Word. These things need to be addressed and we certainly need to pray for a revival in this country. But as we do, let’s make sure that we examine our own lives so that we can see things clearly.
Something to think about.
From our neighborhoods to the nations,
Pastor Larry
0 Comments