Smudge

Luke 6:39-42 (The Message)

He quoted a proverb: "'Can a blind man guide a blind man?' Wouldn't they both end up in the ditch?

An apprentice doesn't lecture the master. The point is to be careful who you follow as your teacher.

"It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt?

It's this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part.

Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Jesus tells us to choose our teachers carefully. The best teachers I've ever known have been people of deep humility.

Sometimes, we all want to become teachers before we've really learned the subject. That's a recipe for disaster.

The temptation, of course, is to quickly fix that which we can see to be wrong.

I can see the "smudge" on someone else's face much better than I can the "sneer" on my own. Maybe that sneer has been there so long that it's grown comfortable, and seems normal.

Imagine a sneer-faced, crazy-eyed person coming at your face with a moist towelette. How would you react?

Exactly. We would run, and we'd be right to do just that.

Why, then, do we sometimes feel license to inflict our own needs and projections on the people around us?

I am so deeply convinced that the world would be a more beautiful place if we each spent some time considering our own contorted places...and asked God to heal our own brokenness.

A hand of friendship, offered from a place of real peace...is rarely rejected. Jesus is our teacher, and time spent with him can show us the path of self-reflection and lasting health.

Prayer: Forgive us for our fascination with others, when there is much we could learn about ourselves. We invite you into our broken places, ask for your healing presence, and pray that you would teach us all as followers of Jesus, to be loving and not hypocritical.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.