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The Speck and the Log

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“So, do you want the fall colored set or the summer colored set?” I asked as two of our daughters allowed me to shop with them. We were looking at dish towels.

I say “allowed” me because truth be told, NONE of our four children like to shop with me. They say I look at everything in the store – even things I don’t want. I like to look.

Come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who does like to shop with me. Carol says I take too long, Alice Marie says I ask her what she thinks about something, and then after she offers her opinion, I ignor it.

I guess I wouldn’t want to shop with me either.

So, back to our daughters – I was asking them to pick out new dish towels because after staying in each of their homes recently, I noticed that their dish towels looked stained and dirty. Let me be clear – the towels were CLEAN! Yet we all know that after a while, the old dish towel is past the point of looking clean. They look like Chicago Bears uniforms when they play at home after a freeze – muddy and dirty! This is the point at which the old dish towel should begin it’s new life as a rag.

Neither daughter seemed to think that their towels were alll that bad. I assured them that oh, yes, they were and so reluctantly they each picked out a new set. Mission accomplished.

Two days later I was cleaning up in my own kitchen. I opened the towel drawer to get out a fresh, clean dish towel to hang over the freshly cleaned sink. The first one I chose was awful! How did this rag get into my towel drawer?

The next towel I chose to hang was no better! In fact, there was not one clean looking dish towel in my kitchen.

I had to smile as I remembered the urgency with which I talked my daughters into the necessity of clean looking dish towels. Yet, I had not noticed my own towels’ pitiful state.

How true this is of many areas of our lives. We are quick to notice the “dirty towels” in others lives, when ours’ may be just as bad or worse.

Jesus addressed this very issue in Luke 6:41-43 (NLT)

41 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? 42 How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”

Could it be that the very thing we feel needs to be changed in our daughter-in-law (son-in-law) (neighbor) (co-worker) (fellow church worker) is an issue that we ourselves have trouble with?

How blind we can be to our own “issues!”

Next time I feel the need to “clean up” someone else’s towels – I best check my own first.

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Speak the Truth

Chicago Skyline January 3, 2014

Chicago Skyline January 3, 2014

“If you don’t quit crying, I’ll leave you on this airplane!” (mom)

“NOOOO, don’t leave me…” followed by louder wailing (child)

“Stop crying right now or I’ll give back all your presents to Santa!” (mom)

“Don’t give back my presents… louder crying (child)

This is the exchange I (and the other approx. 105 passengers) heard as the airplane had landed at O’Hare airport. We were waiting to dock at the gate and disembark. I’m sure the mother and child were very tired after this last leg of a long flight. Both were stressed by the cramped quarters and the extended wait. My heart went out to this mother and her difficult situation.

Yet I was struck by this mother’s unsuccessful efforts to quiet her child.

She lied to her little girl.

1) The mother was NOT going to leave her child on the airplane. The flight attendants would make sure of that!
2) The mother was NOT going to give Santa all her child’s toys. Send them to the North Pole?
3) Her threats were not working. Each comment resulted in renewed crying at an even louder volume.

The above situation was an overt attempt to calm a distressed child by using threats. Yet it is an easy trap for ANY parent to fall into.

1) “If you don’t stop I’ll turn this car around and go back home!” Really?
2) “If you don’t share with your brother, I’ll take all your toys away!” All the toys?
3) “You do that once more I’ll put you out of this car and you can walk home!” Safety?
4) “You won’t leave the table until you finish everything on your plate!” Everything?
5) “If you don’t find your shoes and put them on, I’ll leave you!” Alone?

It is so easy to make sweeping statements when we are frustrated, pressed for time, or embarassed in public. When we do this we are not only lying to our children, we are showing them that we do not really mean what we say.

In Scripture, the disciple Matthew records what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is sitting on a mountain and teaching a crowd of people. He says:

Matthew 5:34-37 New King James Version

34 But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

This is a good principle for those of us who are parents and grandparents.

Say “Yes” or say “No”.

Anything else complicates the issue and often makes it easier for the child to argue. It is definitely harder to dispute a simple “no” or “yes”.

I do feel there are times when an explanation is warranted and even helpful. Yet, when parents and children are stressed, upset, or tired, reason tends to flee. The explanation may just prolong the agony.

The challenge for us as adults is to speak the truth in love, firmly, but in love.

Speak the truth – no means no.

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Silent Night (3)

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Silent Night
By Abigail Hardy
It was December 5th, 1992.  As I rushed with my parents into the emergency room entrance late that night, a gurney sped past us.  Like a snapshot, I can remember, the sight of a leg, knee up in the air covered with a white sheet and below the knee, unnaturally, something large and black was bisecting the bloody leg.  Is that really what I saw?  I was too unsure to ask my parents.  I could tell they were more scared than they were willing to admit to me.
I sat in the waiting room of the ER.  I felt lost and unsteady as my parents went back to talk with the doctors.  Words like “accident” “coma” “racing” “head-on” were punctuating the air of the waiting room as people from our small church slowly filled it. 
Things like this do not happen to us.  Not to kids coming back from a church youth group trip.  Surely not, God. 
The van, driven by our church’s youth group leader and my Dad’s closest friend, had been hit head-on by a man in a Corvette.  He had been racing 120 mph down the curving road, some pieces of his car left hanging high in the trees. 
My oldest sister Hannah had been in the back of the van with four other junior high students from our church youth group, and two adult leaders in the front.  Kirsten, the energetic college student from WCU who helped with the youth group, died instantly.  Hannah was in a coma.  Mr. Brown, the driver, was the victim we had seen as we rushed into the ER with the brake pedal stuck through his lower leg and a broken pelvis and ribs.  He had been pinned in the car and had prayed with the kids and kept them calm until the emergency services arrived and were able to cut him out.  Another student had a serious head injury and the other three had escaped with broken bones or scrapes and bruises.
My sister had been airlifted to Memorial Mission in Asheville soon after my parents and I had arrived at the local ER.  When I got to visit her in the hospital the next day, I remember the sight of my mother, holding her hand, singing hymns and Christmas carols to her unresponsive body. 
On the third day, as my mother sang Silent Night to her daughter, she heard my sister’s voice join with hers.  Hannah had woken up.
This is the meaning of Christmas, lived out by the people I lived with. 
Mr. Brown, speaking peace to panicked kids as his own pain loomed like a giant wave above him. 
Kirsten, losing her life in the middle of obedience to Christ’s call on her to minister to kids.
My mom, singing Silent Night over my sister in total faith that God is our healer and restorer.
My sister, given back life through no merit or effort of her own, and, oh, so thankful for that gift.
And, yes, the tears fall when I sing Silent Night at Christmas.  Because this is a beautiful, broken world that our Almighty God was born to save.

Father God, we have joy and we have pain in this life.  I thank you for redeeming our pain and making our joy complete.