Many popular, successful restaurants in our area are Sunday breakfast restaurants…
I don’t mean the ones offering an uber-expensive, white tablecloth brunch…
I’m talking about restaurants that call themselves pancake houses or coffee shops…
We didn’t know judgment day was on the menu when we walked into one of our favorites recently…
Menus at these restaurants can be 12 pages long and stretch the imagination with every variety of pancake and every version of Eggs Benedict ever created…
(“Would you like hot sauce or sweet and sour sauce on your Beijing Benedict?”)
Waiting lines can be thirty people long and stretch out the door in 90-degree heat and 20- below snow…
We were thrilled there would only be a twenty minute wait…
Standing elbow-to-elbow with other supplicants waiting for tables, we talked and watched as people gave their names to the host and then rejoiced when they were finally called.
But until we left, we were totally unaware of what was really happening in that crowd…
It had been judgment day in the waiting line…
As we got into the car, my wife asked, “Did you see the dad with triplets? Cute kids…but one of the girls had a really old-fashioned name. Why would her parents name her that?”
Judge not, that you be not judged. Matthew 7:1
“And that family of seven… weren’t they noisy? Aren’t you glad we didn’t have to sit by them? Parents should control their kids.”
“And then there was the couple who,,,”
My wife stopped and looked down at the car floor.
“Wow”, she said, looking back up. “Think there’s anybody else I could judge?”
“Do you suppose”, I asked, “somewhere, right now, there’s a car full of people talking about us?”
For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:2
We were silent, thinking about our own faults…
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Matthew 7:3
Then we started to laugh. Uncontrollably. At ourselves…
Important note: My wife suggested this story, and read it before I posted it.
No judgment intended for her!
In fact, I haven’t had a judgmental thought about my wife in at least 15 minutes…
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:5
