Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric September
9, 2021
The Real Value at Being Able to Laugh
at Yourself
Matthew 7:3-5 “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.
Who says
Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor?
He’s just finished being confrontational about the consequences of
judging others (see yesterday’s devo), so he lightens things up with a humorous
image of us with a plank in our eye (maybe the around 11-inch plank from two
days ago!) trying to do speck surgery on our neighbor’s eye. It’s a light-hearted image, but the message
is clear. We need to focus on our own
blindness before we try to “help” others with theirs. But it’s sooo much more satisfying to try and
fix someone else, right? Fixing
ourselves is hard work, it’s uncomfortable, and doggone it, other people NEED
to be fixed more than us. Jesus, I know
it was supposed to be funny, but we’re not laughing.
Jesus is
using humor because he knows it’s hard for us to look at ourselves, especially
the not-so-good stuff like planks in our eye.
The humor is used to try and get us to let down our defenses and laugh
at ourselves enough so that we can see the ridiculousness of our projects to
fix others. Having a sense of humor
about ourselves is essential. Humility
is made more possible by humor; maybe that’s why they both start with
“hum.” 😊
I have a
real admiration for people who are able to maintain a healthy weight, probably
because I have struggled with that my whole adult life. I wouldn’t dream of telling someone else how
to do it, because by and large, I don’t really know. However, about seven years ago, I lost 125 pounds
in little over a year (I’ve gained most of it back, so it’s not really that
impressive). After I lost the weight, I
would get someone at least a few times to ask me unsolicited, “how did you do
it?” I got asked that so many times, I
got tired of giving the answer. You know what’s really crazy? One of my friends took my answer, did the
same thing I did, and to this day is maintaining a healthy weight. He actually gives me credit for helping him
do something I’m still working on. He’s
not my friend anymore (I’m kidding…I love the guy). That experience was humbling but it showed me
what Jesus was talking about in the teaching in the above scripture.
Focus on
addressing your planks. To the extent
that you achieve tangible results, you won’t have to go looking for someone to
help with their “speck.” The
speck-sufferers will come to you. And
you’ll actually be able to help them not only because of your own plank
removal, but because you’ll be a lot more humble in your efforts to help
them. That’s because without humility,
specks become planks.
Prayer: Jesus, help us be aware of our planks. Teach us how and help us to remove them. Then and only then, send us speck-sufferers
to help. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray for your church today
Song: Is There A Plank In Your
Eye? This song made me laugh really
hard, so it goes well with Jesus attempt to get us to laugh at ourselves. Warning:
this song will stay in your head!
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