Deep Thoughts

The more I work with children and teenagers, the more I see the depths of sin in the human heart – my own included. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall when teaching the teens of Red Hill. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” I’ll say. “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” Even as those words leave my mouth, one boy is hitting another, or calling names, or completely ignoring me.

Yet as I teach these lessons, I see God pointing out the same errors in my own life. Last week one of our lessons was on patience. I was trying to communicate the concept of being patient with each another, to “bear with one another in love,” as Ephesians 4:2 says. Just then one boy began to chat to his neighbor, after I had already asked him several times to keep quiet. I lost my cool and shouted at him, right there in front of the whole group. Oops.

I teach the kids to treat each other with kindness, to put others first, to speak words of love rather than words of anger and contempt. Then I catch myself feeling irritated and thinking critical and hostile thoughts about people. What’s the difference? I’m just as guilty, because Jesus said that even anger within one’s own heart is akin to murder.

I thank God for His mercy and I ask Him to help me obey the words of Matthew 7:5 – “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.”