Day 095: Measures

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."  Luke 6:37-38

Jesus gives us commands that are very direct and simple, yet we seem to forget them.

In a long sermon, Jesus tells us that we are going to face the results of all the things that we do in our lives.  In fact, the way that Jesus commands these things is similar to how God commanded them in the Old Testament - that all the commandments are there so that things would go well in the lives of those who obeyed.  When Jesus makes these commands, though, he explains them very simply.

Many times, we live our lives as if we were still children.  We don't think about how the things we do will affect all of those around us.  Now, many of us will say that we already take many factors into consideration, but when we reevaluate things, we might find many more factors that we could be affecting.  Maybe there is that one person we take for granted: we can trample all over her/him, but we forget that our actions will come right back to us.  That's where the above commandments come into play.

It's impossible for us to take every single person that we will ever encounter into account.  I just learned that the human brain can only maintain around 150 relations with other humans on average.  So what's the solution?  Just think about how you want things to come back to you.  Take all of your criticisms that you would make towards others and apply them to yourself.  Do you hate reading typos in articles?  Then start thinking about what care you should take in your own work.  Do people annoy you for not arriving on time?  Then make sure that you will never have any issues with timing and scheduling. 

One more verse I want to consider today is this: "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher."  (Luke 6:40)  A word that seems fleeting is "perfectly".  We think that just by listening to sermons at church or reading the bible will save us.  Jesus is training us.  Jesus is teaching us.  However, his teachings all involve an important point: you have to do them.  The above commandments are all commands.  They involve the second person - the you.  Therefore, let's all remember that Jesus calls us into action.  Jesus is calling us all to put all of his teachings into practice.  We can only train ourselves perfectly if we practice perfectly.  It will be difficult, but when we take the time to evaluate how we do everything with respect to our own lives, we will be able to get closer to being just like Jesus, our teacher.