Wisdom from Scottland
“There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes” (Prov. 30:12).
Don’t you hate singing-dog commercials? I do. There’s one where a puppy bursts out in song: “Oh, there ain’t no bugs on me…”
Now, maybe that pup has an accurate way to assess his bug population. Perhaps he’s just bragging without looking into it. Or maybe he willfully overlooks the fact that he is bug-infested from head to foot; it’s just easier to deny them than to deal with them.
I really don’t care whether the mutt has fleas or not; he’s not my dog. But I do care about staying pure in this world. And you should too!
Here’s the rub. We don’t relish admitting bad stuff about ourselves. We have built-in resistance to seeing ourselves as we really are. That noted Scottish poet Robert Burns opined that it would be good if God would give us the power to see ourselves as others do. Or, in his words:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
The excerpt is from his poem “To a Louse.” Written in 1786 it expressed Burns’ reaction to seeing a louse on a lady’s bonnet at church. There she sat all prim and proper, not imagining anything askew. There he sat, observing the infestation she overlooked. Each viewed her state differently, didn’t they?
What about me? Here I sit. What does my mind think of me? Does it say, “You’re doing OK; there’s nothing you need to check out or change about yourself”? Or does it regularly ask, “How’re you doing?”
Am I willing to compare my life to the High Standard…and make changes? Or am I willing to say: “I feel good about my life; there’s nothing to check or change”? Is life smooth or bumpy for you? Look into it.
That suggests this one question: “Whose eyes do you look through when you reflect on your walk through life: yours, or the High Standard?”
Yours for a well-informed look at all aspects of you,
Rod
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