Lent #5: Discipline 1 of 7 - Self-Examination.

First take the log out of your own eye.

(Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:5)

It is an odd idea when you think about. For example, who is this self that examines myself? How is it that I can stand outside of myself and examine myself? I don’t know where to begin. I have a feeling I’m not going to like what I find. Let me try.

Okay, I tried. But, I’m not sure what I discovered; or, if I’m capable of such self discovery. As the prophet Jeremiah puts it:  The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it?” There’s a good chance I’m fooling myself. Even the Apostle seems to have given up on the idea: “I do not even judge myself (1Cor 4:3).

Yet, Jesus does encourages us to examine why it is so easy “to see the speck in our neighbor’s eye,” but hard to notice “the log that’s in our own eye” (Mt 7:3). That’s a good place to start my Lenten self-examination: “There’s a log in my eye.” Jesus said so.