JULY 29, 2015
Whose Mess?
Out
of the heart come evil thoughts . . . . These are what defile a person. — Matthew 15:19-20
Read:
Matthew
15:7-21
“Could they not carry their own garbage this
far?” I grumbled to Jay as I picked up empty bottles from the beach and tossed
them into the trash bin less than 20 feet away. “Did leaving the beach a mess
for others make them feel better about themselves? I sure hope these people are
tourists. I don’t want to think that any locals would treat our beach with such
disrespect.”
The very next day I came across a prayer I had
written years earlier about judging others. My own words reminded me of how
wrong I was to take pride in cleaning up other people’s messes. The truth is, I
have plenty of my own that I simply ignore—especially in the spiritual sense.
I am quick to claim that the reason I can’t
get my life in order is because others keep messing it up. And I am quick to
conclude that the “garbage” stinking up my surroundings belongs to someone
other than me. But neither is true. Nothing outside of me can condemn or
contaminate me—only what’s inside (Matt. 15:19-20). The real garbage is the
attitude that causes me to turn up my nose at a tiny whiff of someone else’s
sin while ignoring the stench of my own.
Forgive me, Lord, for refusing to throw away
my own “trash.” Open my eyes to the damage that pride does to Your natural and
spiritual creation. May I have no part of it.
Most of us are farsighted about sin—we see the
sins of others but not our own.
INSIGHT:
In today’s passage, Jesus is talking to the
Pharisees, a group of the religious elite in Israel. They taught that obeying
the law was the most important thing, so they emphasized external behavior. Jesus
called attention to the condition of the heart and essentially said, “It
doesn’t matter if you do everything right. If your heart is bad, you are still
defiled.”
Source: Our Daily Bread 2015
