By Pastor Paul Hauschild
Chatfield and Root Prairie
Lutheran Churches
While waiting at the airport terminal for her plane to begin boarding, a woman sat reading a newspaper. Earlier, she had purchased a package of cookies in the airport snack shop to eat after she got on the plane. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the man sitting next to her was eating a cookie. She looked down and noticed that her package of cookies had been opened and the man was eating them!
The woman couldn’t believe that the man would have such nerve as to eat her cookies. So she wouldn’t lose all of her cookies to the man, she slowly reached over, took a cookie, and ate one herself. To her amazement, the man continued to eat even more. Getting more and more irritated, the woman removed all but one cookie from the package and ate them.
At that point, the man reached down and took the last cookie. Before eating it, though, he broke it in half and left half of the cookie for the woman. This made the woman so angry; she grabbed the empty package with the half cookie and crammed it in her purse.
Then to her shock, she noticed that there, in her purse, was her unopened package of cookies!
Sometimes when we judge or condemn others, we end up judging or condemning ourselves. The Bible says in Luke 6:37: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” Also in Matthew 7:3: “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?” We all have been too quick to pass judgement on each other, especially in these turbulent times of politics, economic distress, and COVID weariness.
As we speak, we need to speak our truth in love (Eph. 4:15), not for the goal of being right. We speak to understand each other. We should listen more so that we can empathize and be united in honoring each other’s positions, even in conflict. The more we judge and demand to be right, the more we lose contentment and peace. May God bless your week!