Who needs Optometrists’ assistants?

‘Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others. Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? How dare you say to your brother, ‘Please, let me take that speck out of your eye,’ when you have a log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.’ (verses 1-5)

Read Matthew 7:1-12

Walk into an optometrists and you’ll see a huge range of fancy­ looking, bank-breaking, trendy-brand, space-age frames for glasses. But there’s a problem: if you need glasses, how are you supposed to know what they look like on you? Your eyes are too poor to even see the mirror, let alone you in it! So the $500 Gucci gold-frame the assistant says looks great on you, might as well be a pair of $2 plastic kids’ play frames!

Have you ever felt your life’s a bit like that? While you might be expert at seeing the flaws in others, you don’t really know who you are, or what God thinks of you. Your ego gets in the way. Your fear of what you might find stops you looking. Welcome to being human! It’s not easy to be honest with yourself, to see yourself as God sees you. But the good news is that while you’ll see the flawed broken human being you are, you’ll also see the perfect creature God’s forgiveness makes you! That sets you free to be the best you can be. And you won’t need any shop assistant to tell you how good that is!

Jesus, it’s scary being honest with myself. I don’t like what I see. But you forgive me, so I can appear perfect in your eyes. Thank you. Amen.

“Direction for each day” (LCA, Openbook Publishers, 2006)

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