“Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

                                    Matthew 7:1

I’ve noticed a correlation. People who judge others rarely serve others, and people who help others rarely judge others.

Why do you think that is? I think it’s because when you are judging others, you are drawing a line that you have to cross. That line goes by many names: “better than” or “smarter than” or “more religious than” the person who needs help.

Serving others knows no such line.

When Jesus taught on judgment, I think there’s an underlying message about serving others in His teaching. Not only did He tell us not to judge (and to remove the forest of timber from our own eye before trying to find the speck of dust in someone else’s eye), but then He showed us the purpose of removing the speck from someone else’s eye: to help them.

Why else would you help remove it? We hear all the time about removing the speck from someone else’s eye, but we never talk about the “why”. The “why” is to help them to see better and feel better.

As a Christian, the purpose of stepping into someone else’s world is not to judge them, but to help them.

If you’re not trying to help, you might as well stop. You won’t make anything better. You’ll probably only make it worse.

And most importantly, when you are serving and helping others, you’re going to notice that something else has disappeared: any sense of judgment or need to judge that you once carried.

Still not done here. We’ll continue next time . . .

Father as you remove the things from our eyes that hinder us from seeing others the way You do, open our hearts as well and help us to be the servants You have called us to be . In Jesus’ name, AMEN.