"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).
If I'm late, it's because I many really important things to do. If someone else is late, it is because she's thoughtless about other people's time. If I take a long time to merge into traffic, it's because I'm making good use of road space. If someone else rushes past me to merge into traffic, it's because that person is a thoughtless selfish jerk.
The way I view the world is naturally this way: my faults and wrongs are minimized and other's faults and wrongs are maximized. My errors are accidents; other's mistakes are personality defects.
But if I view the world supernaturally (that is when God's grace comes in and takes over even my perceptions--still getting there!) then Christ in me starts to reverse this order. I maximize my faults (not to discourage myself but to drive myself to Christ), and minimize other's faults. I learn to see that "love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). I value others above myself (Phil 2:3): I value person's reputation more than mine, I value a person's point of view more than mine, and I learn to step back and ask, "how can I see this through your eyes"?
This grace process, this learning-to-take-the-plank-out-of-my-eye...No, wait, just learning to recognize that I have a plank in my eye is nothing short of a divine miracle. And it is a miracle borne out of love. Ellen White says, "Love is the agent which [God] uses to expel sin from the heart. By it He changes pride into humility, and enmity and unbelief into love and faith" (Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, p.77).
Father, thank you for a love that finds me when I can't even see myself.
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