For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (Matt. 7:2).
This promise of just judgment is really the complement of the golden rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (Matt. 7:12). Our text for today shows that we shall have done to us exactly what we have done to others.
False judgments have brought untold sorrow to the world. The Dakota Indians used to make the following prayer: "Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked two weeks in his moccasins."
Dwight Morrow put it in different words when, in giving a reason for his success in dealing with the people of the great republic of Mexico, he said, "I never judge a person until I discover what he would like to be as well as what he really is."
God understands our hearts; He knows what we would like to be; He knows what we re trying to do. He also knows our background and heredity, and takes all these things into consideration.
Our judgment of others may be unfair, because of our own twisted outlook, our inability to see things as they really are. A woman complained to a visiting friend that her next-door neighbor was a poor house-keeper. "Just look," she said, "at those clothes she has hung out on the line. See the black streaks on those sheets and pillowcases!" The friend stepped to the window and looked out. Then she raised the window and looked again. "It appears, my dear," she said. "that the clothes are perfectly clean, but that the streaks you see are on your own windowpane."
In our judgments let us be sure that the trouble is not in ourselves. In fact, we should be safer if we judged not, lest we be judged (Matt. 7:1). It is best to leave things in the hands of God.
MEDITATION PRAYER: "Judge me, O God, and plead my cause...: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man" (Ps. 43:1).
This promise of just judgment is really the complement of the golden rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (Matt. 7:12). Our text for today shows that we shall have done to us exactly what we have done to others.
False judgments have brought untold sorrow to the world. The Dakota Indians used to make the following prayer: "Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked two weeks in his moccasins."
Dwight Morrow put it in different words when, in giving a reason for his success in dealing with the people of the great republic of Mexico, he said, "I never judge a person until I discover what he would like to be as well as what he really is."
God understands our hearts; He knows what we would like to be; He knows what we re trying to do. He also knows our background and heredity, and takes all these things into consideration.
Our judgment of others may be unfair, because of our own twisted outlook, our inability to see things as they really are. A woman complained to a visiting friend that her next-door neighbor was a poor house-keeper. "Just look," she said, "at those clothes she has hung out on the line. See the black streaks on those sheets and pillowcases!" The friend stepped to the window and looked out. Then she raised the window and looked again. "It appears, my dear," she said. "that the clothes are perfectly clean, but that the streaks you see are on your own windowpane."
In our judgments let us be sure that the trouble is not in ourselves. In fact, we should be safer if we judged not, lest we be judged (Matt. 7:1). It is best to leave things in the hands of God.
MEDITATION PRAYER: "Judge me, O God, and plead my cause...: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man" (Ps. 43:1).
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