Plank-eyed Saint

When my three children were young, we lived in a house that had an awesome finished basement where the kiddos spent countless hours playing. They played normal games like Monopoly or Twister or Battleship, but they also often played games they created within their active little minds. Games like "Ride the Mattress Down the Stairs and Live to Tell About it" or "Put Water on the Tile Floor and Slide Across it Until Meghann Falls and Hits Her Head and Has to Go to the E.R. Because She Has a Concussion" ... you know ... fun, creative, totally safe games like that. I will forever remember one particular game the kids used to play over and over, even though they got in trouble each time I caught them in the act. They would take a piece of wood and place it on top of the fort/pink house thing their dad built for them, weighting down the short end (more often than not with one of their bodies) while the long part of the wood dangled precariously in mid-air. Then they would begin their game of "Pirates Making Someone Walk the Plank and Jump into the Pretend Water That's Actually the Hard Basement Floor and the Plank Isn't Attached to a Ship That Weighs Several Tons." Suffice it to say the pirate game didn't have many happy endings, especially for the poor soul who was chosen to be the plank walker. And I distinctly remember what I would say to my children when someone would come up the stairs wailing because they had gotten wounded ... "Why in the world do you guys keep playing a game that always ends up hurting someone? I cannot understand why you don't just stop playing that game."

For all the things that impressed me about my dad, one of the greatest was his knowledge of God's Word ... Daddy knew his Bible. I well recall the minister saying at Daddy's funeral how sad Daddy was when he had to give up teaching Sunday School because he had forgotten how to read. It always amazed me, though, how even when he was deep in the throes of Alzheimer's disease, Daddy could remember and quote verse after verse after verse. I remember how I used to listen to him and think ... more than Daddy was in the Word, the Word was in Daddy. Something Daddy used to say about the Bible has been pounding in my brain for the last week or so ... he always said that you couldn't just take part of the Bible, you had to take it all. Daddy believed that there was nothing in the Bible by accident, but that every word of it was divinely inspired by God and there for a reason. And when he would talk about certain verses that many of us wished weren't part of the Bible, he would often talk about the verses in Matthew 7 ... the ones that speak about not judging each other ... the ones that instruct me to stop looking at the speck of sawdust in the eyes of others and worry about the plank of wood that is in my own. And here's the thing ... I just read that verse again and the ones that precede it, and I realized that I'm both ... the plank and the sawdust ... the person who judges and the person who is judged.

I recently closed a previous post titled The Grateful Leper with the lyrics of a song by Casting Crowns, and I'm going to close this post with the verses from Matthew and with the words of the song once again. Read the words of Scripture, and read the words of the song. But do more than read them, friends ... do more than read them. 

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Matthew 7:1-3 

"Jesus, Friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away

We cut down people in your name but the sword was never ours to swing
Jesus, Friend of sinners, the truth's become so hard to see
The world is on their way to You, but they're tripping over me
Always looking around but never looking up, I'm so double-minded
A plank-eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided

Oh Jesus, Friend of sinners
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers
Let our hearts be led by mercy
Help us reach with open hearts and open doors
Oh Jesus friend of sinners break our hearts for what breaks yours

Jesus, Friend of sinners, the One whose writing in the sand
Made the righteous turn away and the stones fall from their hands
Help us to remember, we are all the least of these
Let the memory of Your mercy bring your people to their knees
Nobody knows what we're for, only what we're against when we judge the wounded
What if we put down our signs, crossed over the lines and love like You did

You love every lost cause; you reach for the outcast
For the leper and the lame; they're the reason that You came
Lord, I was that lost cause, and I was the outcast
But you died for sinners just like me, a grateful leper at Your feet

'Cause You are good, You are good And Your love endures forever
You are good, You are good and Your love endures forever
You are good, You are good and Your love endures forever
You are good, You are good and Your love endures forever

Oh Jesus, Friend of sinners
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers
Let our hearts be led by mercy
Help us reach with open hearts and open doors
Oh Jesus, Friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks Yours

And I was the lost cause, and I was the outcast
You died for sinners just like me, a grateful leper at Your feet."