MATTHEW 7:3

Some years back, I was over at Deb's house. One of the things she pointed out to me was the cobwebs inside her clothes closet. And she said, "My house may be dirty everywhere else, but at least I don't have cobwebs on my living room wall."

When Dave got home after I did, having helped them shift their kitchen appliances, he was expressing disgust at the thick layer of muck in the bottom of her refrigerator. She had opened the door
after he helped push the fridge to the wall. The nasty smell hit him. He must have twitched a bit, and she noticed. Deb shrugged and told him that she would just leave it alone until it was to the point where she couldn't stand it any more. Then she'd clean it. He said she must have a very high tolerance.

Isn't that the way we are with our own sin life? When we notice our cobwebs -- the little surface things hidden behind the "door" -- we think, "At least I don't have cobwebs on my "outer wall". But we sometimes refuse to check the muck in the darkness of our own life.

How quick we are to become object lessons for the Lord’s teaching on the mote and log. And how often are we willing to open kind hearts towards others who aren't quite a "good" as we are? [I "ouch" a lot on that topic.]

³. Why do you stare from without at the very small particle that is in your brother's eye but do not become aware of and consider the beam of timber that is in your own eye?