Where's the Crowbar?

Don't you just hate it when a speck of dust gets into one of your eyes and causes extreme discomfort? It's particularly irritating when you can feel that speck there but you just can't seem to get it out! You keep rubbing the eye until the eyeball becomes all red, and voila!, now you have a puffy eye that you can't see out of.

I've had more of those episodes than I can count. Unfortunately, all the tricks. . . you know them - blinking your eye fast, using a cotton swab to move the speck to the corner of your eye, rubbing it, washing it out with eye wash - didn't help. Why? Because the specks I get in my eyes are more like logs. Sounds painful doesn't?

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye. - Luke 6:41-42

A speck is irritating, but imagine how it feels to have a log in your eye. Ouch! But how did that log get there to begin with? It got there because I was feeling some sort of perverse pleasure from identifying and pointing out faults in others, while not seeing my own. It is so much easier to discover the faults of others that are so bothersome, but I'm realizing that those very traits I find so bothersome in others are my own bad habits and weaknesses. Yet I don't want to discuss my faults.

Instead it is much easier to magnify the faults of others while finding excuses or justifications for my own. Perhaps this is because I experience satisfaction by classifying my own faults as much more serious when found in others. By seeing myself in the shadow of someone else's faults, I feel better and am not so concerned about the relative insignificance of my own.

I don't think anyone can see well with that big, puffy, and red eye, much less spot a speck in anyone's eye. I guess that is why our Lord said that whosoever does not first take the log out of his own eye is a hypocrite, and might I add, a big one at that. Not to mention that if I have a log in my eye and chose to ignore it, then I am willfully choosing to bear with the discomfort and pain that the lodged log brings.

All of this brings to mind another thought - I should treat the sin in my life as a speck in the eye, when even a small speck of it is enough to bring irritation, I should hate sin so much that even such a tiny speck will be enough to cause me discomfort and give me an overpowering desire to remove it.

Thankfully, for our physical eyes, there are products like the eyewash to flush out the speck and bring relief. As for the sins in my life and the log in my eye, I can, and should, count daily on God's Word to help identify and wash them out.