Weighed, Considered, and Found Wanting

Have you ever felt like you had been weighed, considered, and found wanting? Do you ever feel like one of those plastic six pack holders on the side of the road? Do you feel like your boss/religious leader/parents/other assorted relatives have decided you're too loony for the 'real' jobs?

If you said yes to any of those things, this post is for you.

I want first to say that there is only One person truly competent to hold the scales on which your life and works are balanced. The rest of the people who try to be arbiter, judge, and jury, are in line with YOU. Every one of them is weighed on the same scales and have come up short. Without fail.

I see them in my mind's eye, standing in that line, shivering in their knickers and socks and blinder glasses as they wait for the verdict. Some of them turn to you and eye me up and down. I've seen the questions in their eyes. "What's her problem?" or "Why is she even in this line with me? She's a sarcastic freak with a cluttered house...." and they go on ad infinitum ad nauseum.

I know they're thinking things like that, because I've been guilty of trying to wield the scales myself. Me--the least qualified to hold the scales. I look through my smoky-lensed blinder glasses and see what I think are the sum and total of all that person's faults and weaknesses and sometimes they make me feel good.

"At least I'm not that bad," I say smugly to myself, not seeing the brown, bruised, rotten spots on the other side of my own soul.There are things I don't want laid bare for all to see, just as there are in every soul that ever lived, except one. He is the only person qualified to hold the scales and weigh our hearts and deeds. We can watch when he levels the twin pans. We can try and add things to the positive side, but in the end, we must stand there in that line and wait.

The thing about the Judge, is that He is supremely fair. He can see into the inner recesses of our hearts and see what we really meant to do and say and think. He sees our motives and our sorrows, our dreams both whole and shattered. Those things go into the other cup. And then He puts His finger on the plus side, dipping the cup well below that of our heaped-up sins and mistakes.

That action, performed in perfect love, gives me all the hope I need to keep pursuing any kind of upward course.

All other pretenders to the position lose credence under the blazing light of truth. Certainly there are certain people endowed with the right to judge us on a momentary basis. Their jurisdiction reaches only to the extent of the law. They have no place mucking around in the depths of the soul.

The man on the street has no judgment seat. My next door neighbor is in line behind me. The woman who eyes me up and down because my children are running noisily around the library has as many brown spots as I do. I must remember my own rusty mistakes.

Put the level down and step away, oh Stander in Lines. Lay not stock in the opinions of people who don't matter. Never forget the wishes of the One who does.