Quote of the Day: Life's Chapters

 My cubicle mate Cowgirl Cre called my name and asked me to turn around and look at something on her computer on her facebook page. It was a quote, one that left her particularly fascinated:

Do not, I repeat, do not allow anyone to sit high and look low to judge you. Everyone has a chapter in their life they don't read out loud.

Well, dang!!

I heard that.

And I think that anyway. People who are overly judgmental and critical of folks and their lives are most likely hiding a few things.

They have quite a few skeletons crammed type in their proverbial closets. There are a few chapters in their lives that they keep hidden from view.  And they make themselves feel better about their own secret issues by judging the lives of others.

I see that all the time. 

And it is reminiscent of one of my favorite scriptures:

Romans 2: 2 (Message version). Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one.

Yes it is.  A well known way indeed.

It takes one to know one. Um-hmmm...

One word in that quote sticks out to me: Everyone.

EVERYONE.

Everyone has something. We all have lived and have done some interesting things that we were just glad we got through it.  Lord knows I myself have done some questionable things. Highly questionable.

So it's hard for me to sit here and look at folks and judge them. Most of my thoughts in that arena run along the lines of "I've done something similar to that before."  And I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. And how I can be of help in some way.

Now with that said, I think we all judge in someway, even if we don't come out and say it. But you know what we're talking about here. Everyone knows those people who are waaaay over the top. They ALWAYS got something to say about someone else is doing.

They are experts on everyone else's business except their own business, which by the way, they hold close to their chest. They are quite secretive about their own business.

We all know people like that. I know I do.

But the antidote for that behavior is to remember our own lives, and to go back and read a few of those chapters in our books.

We don't have to read them aloud... just read them in our own minds to ourselves.

And maybe we will have some compassion for others who are going through things... since we ourselves have gone through things our ownselves.