Removing the Plank

 

Recently a friend wrote to say that God had spoken to them. The gist of the email was the need to ‘remove the plank from your own eye’. The phrase comes from the teaching of Jesus, when with characteristic hyperbole, he stretches the illustration by saying all too often we concentrate on the failings of others, whilst overlooking our own. You can imagine the story. Here is a person with a huge piece of wood sticking out of their eye whilst clumsily they attempt to pick out the sawdust from someone else. When I’d read it, I knew exactly what they meant, since I too can give time to the issues of others whilst leaving my own to fester.

When through either ignorance or arrogance I live as if everything is fine, I run the risk of taking on a status that can leave me isolated and proud. When this happens it is easy to start to strive to hold a position that is beyond our grasp. The result is faith through achievement rather than by grace and the rest God promises to us soon evaporates. We end up in strife.

What I understand by rest is not necessarily the absence of work, but finding the rhythm to sustain us in life. Imagine the eagle as it soars on the current of the wind, mobile, active, and in motion, yet at rest; doing what it’s created to do. It is as we connect with our purpose and realign to the intention of our Creator that we discover true rest. Consider the words of Jesus, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Getting to that place of rest is certainly a journey. Whenever situations come that challenge us, our rest can be taken and we know when it’s missing. God’s desire is not for us to live there – he has something better, but we find it not in removing specks from others, but in allowing God to remove the plank that distorts our own vision.