MATTHEW 7:1-6
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

"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.

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

Just call me “Plankeye”
It’s so much easier to pick out and point out other’s faults and sins than to confess my own. And I find it rather easy to confess my own! Thing is, I consider many of the sins in others to be more dangerous to God’s Kingdom cause than my own sin.

Take judgmentalism for example. So many “spiritual folk” hammer people for peripheral “sins” or things that aren’t really sins at all (poor judgment maybe, but not sin) while they themselves display attitudinal sins like Rudolph’s red nose! Jesus hammered these rigid, judgmental kind of people.

Problem with me following Jesus’ example is that I’m not sinless like he was. I tend to hold grudges against people like this. Worse, I don’t have the same mental clarity as Jesus did, so (I hate to admit this!) what I see as dangerous and harmful judgmentalism, may, in fact, be a prophetic call to repentance and holiness.

While Jesus was fully human, I think the spiritual clarity he possessed as a fully divine person enabled him to respond with perfect appropriateness to people rather than out of any unhealthy or unresolved issues from his past. I hope the more I take on Jesus’ character that I too will have increasing clarity. But I strongly suspect that my childhood experience with judgmental Christians colors my response today. Growing up deeply imbedded in the church exposed me to plenty of perfectionism, criticism, and judgmentalism.

So, as much as it pains me, I have to listen to Jesus myself, rather than think of others when I listen to him talk about planks in “you own eye”. He’s talking about me. As debilitating as judgmentalism is, my sin is always the plank, and others sins, even the sin of judgmentalism, is always the speck.

Gracious God, you see me completely and know the ways I bring harm to your creation through my own sinfulness. Grant me the increasing ability to inspire others to leave all kinds of sins behind by leaving behind my own. - Mike Leamon

Logging
Logging is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. There are a myriad of potential hazards lurking for the worker who cuts corners or tries to rush. We burned wood to heat our home when I was on the farm which meant we cut a lot of wood.

Grandpa and I were team workers when it came to wood-cutting. He would be in the woods, cutting and trimming the logs and I would drive the tractor, hauling the logs out of the woods to where we could cut them up more easily. One day Grandpa was trimming an ash top and a limb snapped unexpectantly and cut Grandpa’s leg. We had to run Grandpa to the hospital where he received multiple stitches.

Jesus uses an absurd analogy to teach a simple truth. No one has ever had a “log” in their eye, but we have all had a speck of sawdust or dirt in our eyes. Jesus turns the tables on us and tells us we all have logs in our eyes that need to be taken care of.

Taking care of the log in my eye means I need to let the professional logger come and do His work. Logging is never free of pain. There is cutting and skidding and at times collateral damage. Logs often affect other areas of my life that I did not think were involved. Following the removal of my log, I am in a position of humble love and empathy for those with logs and splinters in their eyes.

Master logger, I come to you with a sharp awareness of the logs in my life that need to be removed. Come in with your logging tools and work in my life removing all that stands in the way of your will. Clear out everything that is not of you in my life. - Dan Jones

MATTHEW 6:25-34
“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? “

And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Starlings and sparrows

I grew up on the farm and there were always starlings and sparrows flying around. They would nest in the side of the barn, eat the grain out of the grain bin and make a mess of things. So I hunted them. I tried to shoot them out of the trees, snag them in traps or board up their nesting places. Yet these birds kept multiplying and coming back, seemingly unworried about my attempts to get rid of them.

I am not proud of some of the things I did to these creations of God. Today I look back and marvel at how God took care of these creatures despite my direct assault on them. I do not know what takes place in the mind of birds, but I do know they were consistently taken care by God, often through my labors, even though I did not like them.

How ironic, that God calls us to live like the birds. Jesus does not point to the eagle or hawk, he points to the sparrow and starlings; lowly birds. It is even more ironic, that God often provides for us through the very people who would do us harm given the opportunity. But God in his mercy, (and I think humor), provides for us through the least expected ways. Worry? Why bother? Seek first the Kingdom of God and God will supply all your needs. He may even supply them through your enemies.

Lord of all creation, of birds, and flowers, and farmers, I confess I have not always treated your creation with the right attitude or care. Help me to take a lesson from the birds today about trusting in you. Show your power in my life by providing for my needs, and that, even through those who would oppose me. - Dan Jones

Crossing bridges when I get there
Dealing with the issues immediately in front of me gets complicated by the issues I anticipate in the future. What about the long term implications of this decision I’m about to make? And what if the economy turns around, or I lose my job, or my wife gets cancer? What if my children respond badly or everything blows up in my face? The list of “what ifs” can get longer than Santa’s list of naughty children. Then I become paralyzed, stressed, confused, even angry with God.

Anticipating the future is always dicey business – for me, not for my Father.

How should I deal with the issues life on this planet throws my way today? It’s useless to tell me not to worry without offering an alternative. Worry loves to swoop in when my mind isn’t focused on a better alternative!

Jesus offers the positive focus of God’s rule. Rather than asking “what if” seeking the kingdom asks “what’s right”. How would Father deal with this issue? WWJD if he were me facing this need, this choice, this painful issue? Rather than engaging in the fruitless act of figuring out all the “what ifs” Jesus would have me do what is right today and trust the flowing ripples and falling chips to him.

Doing my best to reflect my Father’s will in each decision, of course, depends on how great an emphasis I place I knowing my Father and understanding his heart and mind. My best will be a pitiful effort if I ignore God in life’s routine. On the other hand, if the pursuit of God becomes a core value and passion, I can be confident that my best effort to reflect the Father’s mind and heart will not fail.

A focus on righteousness today frees me to cross future bridges when I get there.

Father, I will live with a greater awareness of you today. I will pursue your heart and mind as they are revealed on the pages of the Bible. I will listen to your Spirit’s whispered convictions and corrections. By your grace, I’ll leave tomorrow’s bridges until tomorrow. - Mike Leamon

MATTHEW 6:19-24
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Working on Self Awareness
The evil eye darts about the land just as it did in Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy “Lord of the Ring”. Only in reality that eye often belongs to me. And I struggle to cut it out.

The struggle really is about finding the line between enjoying God’s good creation – and that of humans who express his image by creating wonderful things out of that creation – and making those good things my treasure. I look at my sports car, the two-seater that I use for all my pastoral work, and I treasure it. I love driving that thing. It’s turned hospital visiting into a delight!

While my bedroom furniture was a wedding gift over 28 years ago, and I haven’t drooled at or even desire to by a brand new set (I’m so spiritual!), I’m not sure I haven’t crossed the treasuring earthly things line anyway. I love that bed! We have one of those pillowy tops over the mattress. My pillow is, well, abundantly pillowy. After a long day, or a short day, I treasure my bed.

I am very happy to have the money to afford several luxuries. Now, Bill Gates wouldn’t consider what I own luxuries, and maybe most of you wouldn’t either, but 90% of the world’s 6 billion people would. More important, I would feel bad if my financial situation demanded that I give up what I have come to treasure.

Does Jesus consider me a servant of money because I own these things, more, because I very much want to own and enjoy them? Has my heart become tethered to earthy and temporary realities, and by implication less tethered to heaven, because I would feel bad if my income forced me to eliminate cable TV, to own only my mini-van with its 178 thousand miles, or to never be able to eat out?

I think not. But I cannot confidently (or glibly?) declare I know not. The line between enjoying the earth that is “the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” and possessing an eye primarily for the things of earth such that money becomes my master is awfully thin and sometimes nearly invisible.

Lord of my Life, you do not want me to become a paranoid or guilt-ridden Christian always worried if I cross lines. By the same token, I know you want me to be self-aware and alert enough to detect when my tricky heart (Jeremiah 17:9) slips from enjoying the earth and its fullness to so treasuring it that having the money to by more of it is in danger of becoming my master. Help me to be this self-aware. - Mike Leamon

Plato’s cave

The Greek philosopher Plato described life through the allegory of a cave. Picture a group of people sitting in a cave with their backs to the entrance. The sun is shining through the mouth of the cave casting shadows on the back wall of the cave of everything passing by the cave. The people in the cave have been there so long they have accepted the shadows as reality. They no longer realize what they see is not the real thing. They accept the shadows as reality and refuse to believe there could be anything better than what they perceive as reality.

Plato’s point was that all we perceive through our senses about life is really a shadow of the real thing. (The conversation becomes very ethereal and existential quickly.) If we think about life in terms of Plato’s allegory of the cave and Jesus’ word about our perception of light we realize how deceptive human wisdom can be.

Millions of people in this world think they have discovered the real meaning of life in many things other than Jesus. They pursue this “meaning” with all they have and are, thinking they are pursuing the ultimate purpose of life. In the end they are hopelessly lost when they discover what they thought was light was really darkness. Jesus wants us to know He is the light of the world. He is the only one who can give us a right perspective on life that leads to fullness of life, instead of living among the shadows on the cave wall.

Father of light, guide my life with the light of life. Help me to avoid the tempting shadows that are tying to imitate the real light of the world. I desire to walk in the light each day and to no longer live in the cave. - Dan Jones

MATTHEW 6:16-18

“And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face. Then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your Father, who knows what you do in private. And your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

Motivation monitor

I wonder how much of what happens in the life of the church is actually done for God and not other people. I will never know, and it really is not my place to investigate this in others, but I do need to examine my own motives. I confess, last Sunday we had a visitor who is someone I look up to. He and his family stopped in unexpectedly and I immediately found myself thinking about the quality of the sermon, the songs we were singing and what this man would think about them. I wanted to impress him.

My next thought was the voice of the Holy Spirit convicting me of pride. I had to bow in prayer, and asked my wife to pray with/for me, in repentance for my selfish attitude and that God would help me not to “see” this man while I was preaching, but that I would preach for God’s glory. God worked in my life in that service and this man disappeared from my thoughts while I was sharing from God’s Word.

Jesus is a heart doctor not a fashion guru. He wants to hook up the heart monitor to help us check our motives in service. Serving to please the pastor, board, to fill empty spots, or because we always have, is not the right motivation. Service to God must be exactly that: service to God. Our motivational vector must always point towards God. Only then will our service yield eternal rewards.

Holy heart surgeon I continue to need your touch in my life. I confess my tendency to avert my eyes from you to others. Help me to stay focused on you in every area of my life so that you will receive the glory in all I do. Thank you for your grace and strength this past Sunday. You are great! - Dan Jones

Fasting? Pooh!

I hate fasting. I love food too much.

“Too much” are probably the operative words here. In truth, I use food as a stress reliever; bad news not only for my girth but for my relationship with God. I moved from eastern Pennsylvania to western New York this summer. Food smoothed the transition.

Lest God think that food serves only as a source of stress relief, I really do appreciate the marvelous idea he thought up – make humans to need food to survive and add a blessed bonus, taste buds! Put sugar in the earth, and rhubarb and strawberry plants, and whalah(!) strawberry rhubarb pie. What a blessing. Cocoa plants and cows make possible gooey Baby Ruth candy bars surrounded in milk chocolate.

I love nibbling on Nabisco’s Cheese Nips! Thank God for wheat, salt, and cows; and of course trees that turn into boxes to hold these tasty morsels. Speaking if grain, my wife made deliciously moist zucchini bread at summer’s end - from fresh garden zucchini! Sadly, (happily for her) she ate the last piece the other day (L) while I stood by drooling.

I love food so much I, perhaps more than many others, maybe even more than the hypocrites of Jesus’ day, should follow the example of my spiritual forefather, John Wesley. He fasted weekly. Many other spiritual giants did the same thing. Sure, Jesus defended his disciples’ lack of fasting. But I don’t think he’d defend my love affair with food.

There are many good reasons to fast. For me, the top one is probably sorting out who (what) really is the love of my life. Who (what) is my ultimate source of comfort? Do I worship the Creator or his delicious creation? Getting these sorted out not only leads to better spiritual health, but my body just might pat me on the back too.

Father, I confess that my practice of what is right lags behind my knowledge of what’s right. Thank you for your patience and for your convicting word today. Help me move to the point where I eat to live rather than live to eat. If fasting helps keep my relationship with you primary and my relationship with food healthy, I’ll fast. And I won’t mope around in misery when I do it. - Mike Leamon

MATTHEW 6:14-15
“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Always a failure in need of grace!
Forgiveness defines the heart of Christianity. Only my trust in God’s forgiveness opens the door to my participation in eternal life. Trusting his forgiveness means that I recognize I am not capable of earning the right to be his child. I can never be good enough to deserve him as Father and his home as my destiny. I am his always and only because he graciously forgave and still forgives me.

No matter how much love he pours into me and no matter how much that gracious gift of love transforms me into a whole and holy person, I remain entirely dependent on his daily forgiveness. Here is one of the great ironies of the Christian life. The holier I get the more I realize no one is holy except God. With Isaiah I cry out, “Woe is me!”

So how can I not forgive those who sin against me? Sure, the more God makes me holy – like himself – the more I too will become a master forgiver. But this isn’t the context of Jesus’ words. Instead Jesus insinuates that no matter how far I mature, I am always a failure in need of grace. How can I not forgive those who fail me when I fail God? How can I not be gracious to those who hurt and offend me, when God is gracious when I hurt and offend him?

Any lack of forgiveness in me demonstrates that I am not fully relying on his forgiveness, but on a combination of his grace and my own merits. Somehow I am not as desperate for his forgiveness as you are. So, from my slightly or significantly better position than yours, I won’t forgive you. You are less deserving than I.

I know this feeling. I get very angry and unforgiving of those who I perceive hurt the church and who hurt me as a pastor. Those jerks! Don’t they see what they are doing? They are so judgmental, so rigid and pharisaical, so arrogant, so stupid. By resisting forgiveness, my actions call out, “I’m not as much a jerk as these – my sins aren’t as bad as theirs! But alas, they are. And I am just as desperate for God’s grace as they are. Whether or not they see this reality doesn’t matter. Jesus has spoken and revealed this reality to me. Now I must choose.

Grand Forgiver, truth is, I struggle with the sinful attitude of superiority – that somehow I am less in need of your forgiveness than several others. I am sorry and repent again of this attitude. Grant this sinner the grace to forgive other sinners, even and especially the ones I perceive as possessing a holier than thou attitude; those whose sin is a mirror of my own. – Mike Leamon

Forgiven to forgive

Forgiveness to me is always an act of God. I cannot truly forgive from the heart without holding it over the person I forgave without the work of God. I experience God’s forgiveness and grace and then am asked to pass along that work of grace to others. I become a conduit of God’s forgiveness into the live of others.

In the Catholic tradition you go to the priest for absolution (forgiveness) of sins. The priest acts as a conduit of God’s forgiveness into the confessor’s life. I do not believe you have to go to a priest to receive forgiveness (we have direct access to God through Jesus Christ), but I do think God wants us to be “priests” to others. God asks us to be conduits of forgiveness for other people.

This is such an important aspect of our faith, that to fail to forgive others, (be a conduit of God’s forgiveness and grace) is to stop the flow of God’s forgiveness into your own life. Perhaps our failure to forgive others is a demonstration of pride and self-righteousness. (They owe me, I did not do anything wrong, they need to realize how wrong they are and come repent to me.) Attitudes like this lead us away from repenting our sins to God and receiving his forgiveness.

God of forgiveness and grace I confess I am in need of your forgiveness. Help me to see how much I need you, and in return recognize my need to forgive others as an act of receiving your grace. I want to be an open conduit of grace and forgiveness today. - Dan Jones