save the starfish

the question is: are we to judge others or not

Jesus says judge not lest ye be judged and paul said judge everything and hold to the good and don't you know we will judge angels and then james said who are you to judge your neighbor and moses said long ago to judge your neighbor fairly

there is a judgement rendered to the unbeliever and the failing believer when the righteous believer comes among them, a guilt that is evoked, and there is some loving response, some amelioration we could provide to them in the moment if we recognize it...but i lack the subtlety or the compassion or the desire and i pray it can be learned from God's example

then there is the worldly view of the church lady, comdemning everything in sight, and rightly so, but wrongly too, it seems...so paul says to us we judge ourselves against ourselves and then we look pretty good but that is the wrong measure and provides us with the benchmark we must hit to judge properly our own behavior

Jesus did say we are to remove the sliver from our brother's eye, and we do it because we love him, right, but that we have a plank in our own and it's not the plank we address here or how to remove it but the fact of once having removed it we are to reach out to those around us and provide them with assistance

if only i loved

how can i say i love God if i insist my brother recognize his sliver before my plank comes out

loving God

psalms express many emotions and as an unemotional due to overemotional man i find i cannot read them very often, i do not understand them, i do not love God like that and i am afraid of anyone who does or can

psalm 63 has verse 3 in it, because loving you is better than life i will praise you

there are holes in my life, to be sure, but God has given me a wonderful woman to counsel me, guide me, criticize my driving, raise my children, feed my belly and to whisper sweet praises in my ear though i have been a beast to her and our kids and passing pedestrians and motorists alike, and i compare my feelings for her (when i stop to appreciate her) and my feelings for God and i used to suspect my feelings for God were just too big to contemplate

perhaps, though, they are too small to contemplate...i do not understand how "better than life" can be true except as emotional love-talk hyperbole, and yet a man i respect is teaching that not only is it literally true, it is obtainable to even the emotional idiot

there are moments when the scales fall and you realize you have been looking at your navel again and the sunrise is so glorious and the world is so big and the love your spouse has for you is so miraculous and undeserved you think you understand God's grace a little better and though you want to kick yourself for your stubborn thick head and your hard, hard heart you also thank God that he was so patient and so gentle when he brought you to this moment so you could praise him

i see light through my lids at the moment and i think to myself of sunrises past that God has shared with me and i am eager, and emotional, to open my eyes to this new vista i am certain lies before me