Imagine this: I am sitting in the choir at church quietly waiting for the communion commodities to be served while listening to the pastor appointing members to serve. I looked down from my position in the loft and saw one of the chosen men arise and head towards the altar. What?! I sat frozen with disbelief. That man was planning to divorce his wife! His wife was one of my friends. We shared time together attending morning prayer services. She had confided his intentions to me. I thought, “Perhaps the pastor doesn’t know this man’s plans.”

 

As I sat, a shocking scripture swept over me, one I had not thought of and had never connected to my own life in a personal way. Now, here it was in my consciousness, and it stopped me cold! Found in Matthew 7:3: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye when you have a plank in your own.” Again… What?! I mused over the implication that these thoughts I had entertained certainly could be doing just that. But what could I have in my own eye that is so large, lying unspotted and poisonous in my pious life?

 

I no longer thought of the man my mind had condemned, and I repositioned my thoughts on my own modest self. No way! I could not begin to imagine anything that ungodly. Nothing came to mind about me. Another scripture, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9) While certainly true in my case, I had never stopped to connect my flaws and expose them even to myself before. I knew I had repented of my less than sensational sins as a child, walking down the long aisle at the large community church in Long Island, California. That was my salvation response to the call the pastor had given.

 

No, I couldn’t think of anything to strongly suggest I had offended God in any major way since that day when I was five years old. I remembered how a group of girls had suddenly stopped talking and laughing at school when I approached them. One of the girls had whispered, “Stop! Grace is coming!” I realized they had stopped the crude joke because of me. I was not in the circle of those conversations, and it was now apparent. It annoyed me to be left out!

 

I guess it was not until the following Sunday’s communion and my trip home with family that it finally dawned on me. PRIDE! My own pride was my downfall. It exposed itself in my condemnation of a brother-in-Christ, whom God loved as much as me. It was PRIDE that arose in me in thinking he was not good enough to serve communion to his fellow believers. It was PRIDE that had surfaced in my life. I had looked at my own self-righteous behavior thinking it was godly. I had shunned the ones who chose to walk without Christ. How ungodly was that? Revelation had arrived and it wasn’t admirable. It wasn’t pretty!

 

God, help my prideful condition. Lord, help me to recognize when I stand needy before your throne of grace. Lord, cover me with your mercy and forgiveness. I desire to repent of my satisfaction with sacred pride that had overtaken my life.

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by Grace Booth