Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Eye Sore

This morning I awoke with a pain in my right eye. It felt like I had something in my eye--a stray eyelash or some dust, perhaps--so I took out my contact, rinsed it off and put it back in. The pain remained. Then I tried taking out the contact again, and this time flushed my eye out with Visine, but to no avail. My eye continued to sting and started watering.

On my way to work I thought of Jesus' admonition to His followers in Matthew 7:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:3-5)

Given that my eye was definitely feeling more like it had a plank in it rather than a measley speck of dust, these verses really spoke to me. I couldn't help but think that God was reminding me of the danger of fault-finding with others while ignoring my own glaring faults. I sometimes find myself being nit-picky, and, let's face it, judgmental and overly critical. After all, it's much more enjoyable to pick apart someone else rather than deal with my own shortcomings.

I think God was using this sore eye today to gently nudge me from some critical behavior that I've been exhibiting lately. While my eye is still a little bloodshot, the pain has subsided a good bit, and I'm trusting that it will be gone by morning. Better yet, I'm trusting that my judgmental tendencies will be lessened as I submit to the Spirit's work on my heart.

3 comments:

That Girl said...

I'd hate to see you have to pluck it out!

Kelley said...

Great analogy!
Hope you are feeling better.
And I'm with Terri on that plucking out thing!

The Khans said...

You always have such insightful things to write about. Hope you are doing well. We need to get together before you leave the country.