Luke 6:42 “First cast out the beam out of your own eye, and then you shall see clearly to pull out the splinter that is in your brother's eye.”
Isn’t it interesting how a little piece of dust in your eye can make everything you see blurry? You can’t even focus. You try blinking, opening your eyes real wide, but no matter what, you can’t see clearly. It’s not until your eye starts to water that you can get that dust particle washed out.
Kind of reminds me of that old Johnny Nash song from 1972, I Can See Clearly Now, and then the hit version from 1993 by Jimmy Cliff. What a great song, and what I believe, a great message too. The lyrics go like this, “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna’ be a bright (bright), bright (bright), sunshiny day”. Then it goes on, “Oh yes, I can make it, the pain is gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared. Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for. It’s gonna’ be a bright (bright), bright (bright), sunshiny day”.
Luke 6:41-42 speaks to me of how I can have clarity in my life. It explains that there is something in my eye that stops me from seeing clearly. From focusing on the simple blessings of everyday life. Luke describes this as a beam, meaning a log or tree trunk, or for us today, a telephone pole. The same story is told in Matthew 7:1-5, but goes into detail of what the beam really is. It’s a judgmental, critical, fault finding attitude toward those people around us. It’s the “what’s wrong with you!” outlook.
Both Luke and Matthew give us a formula for clarity. If we want to see clearly, we need to simply get our eyes off the faults of others around us and focus on ourselves. We need to put our magnifying glass away, and stop trying to find the tiny little dust particle in the other person’s eye, and focus on getting the beam out of our own.
“I can make it, the pain is gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared. Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for…” Let’s all get the log out of our eye and have a “bright (bright), bright (bright), sunshiny day”!