Don’t Judge Me!

There are a million times a week I probably want to say this – mostly while my three-year-old is having a meltdown or being “persistent” somewhere. Ironically enough I find myself thinking this while we’re alone at home dealing w/ the same threeyearoldness(I think it may just be a disease, kind of tempted to put it on Wikipedia actually… Threeyearoldnessitis – kind of catchy!).

One morning this week I was reading the book of Jude, I’ve never actually stopped to do that so I wondered what I’d find. It was a good book/chapter – what really stood out to me was one verse in particular:

v. 9 – Not even the archangel Michael, when he argued with the devil about who would have the body of Moses, dared to judge the devil guilty. Instead, he said, “The Lord punish you.”

Ummm, wow. That is powerful. Powerful to me anyway. I try my hardest not to judge, but we all do it – subtly or in someone’s face, we all do it. It was a great reminder that even while the archangel was arguing with the devil (which, personally, just the thought of that is amazing) he did not “dare” to judge him guilty. I mean, come on, if there is ANYONE who we could probably be safe with judging – it’s Satan, right? Apparently not. It’s a huge slap back into reality for me.

We hate when we feel others are judging us, we get that squeamish feeling first with a desire to run as fast as we can from those piercing eyes and even more piercing thoughts – yet I think we all at times feel like we’re “safe” to make a judgment call on a particular situation. No? Maybe that’s just me… so for ME it was a huge wake up call.

Who am I? Nobody. I don’t want to be judged, not by anybody except my Father and the grace that He gives (more than I give myself at times – certainly more than I give anyone else, it’s why I don’t run the world, universe, everything.) I may have to find myself apologizing more often. This is one lesson I don’t want to forget.