Minding your own business
Steve Coogan’s Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge was a parody of a chat show. But the whole twist of the show was that Alan Partridge was always far more interested in himself than in the guests he was meant to be interviewing.
But perhaps that’s actually no bad thing. If we paid more attention sometimes to ourselves than what others are doing, we might see things differently.
Jesus tells the story about two men. They’d both turned up at church and were praying.
The first one tells God how grateful he is that he isn’t like “them others” – greedy, dishonest or an adulterer. He thanks God that he does the right things – not like that man over there.
The man to whom he is referring is stood at a distance, hanging his head, asking God to take pity on him for all the things he has got wrong.
Jesus points out that it is the second man, not the first that has made things right with God.
The first man was busy measuring himself by everyone else’s standards, judging them along the way by what he thought he knew about them, and a bad understanding of what God wanted.
The second man judged himself only by God’s standards and knew he didn’t measure up. But because of that he was able to confess and receive God’s forgiveness.
The first man was never going to receive forgiveness, because he couldn’t acknowledge that he needed it. He was so busy living his life judging everyone else, without thinking of what he might be doing.
It is not our job to judge others, but we should care think about our own lives. Not to think how fabulous we are, but to consider the reality of our lives before God. It’s not about beating ourselves up about how bad we are, but coming to God prayerfully to allow him to touch the parts of our lives that are not right, that we might receive fullness to live.
So let’s not watch what others are doing, lets mind our own business.
Pam's Perambulation 
[…] theme of this reading follows right on from last weeks challenge by Jesus, as to how lives are lived. Not what we want everyone to think, but the […]