Someone shared a newspaper clipping with me.* It told about a young couple who had moved into a new home. 

Every so often the wife would look out the window and see her neighbour hanging her laundry out to dry. “That laundry is not very clean; she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.”

This happened on several different occasions. She kept commenting on the dirty laundry, and the husband just looked on in silence.

A few months later the wife looked out the window to see her neighbour hanging her laundry out to dry yet again. But this time it was a nice clean wash. “Look, she’s finally learned how to wash correctly,” she commented.

The husband replied, “I got up early this morning and cleaned OUR windows.”

Oops!

The problem wasn’t with the other person’s dirty laundry, but with their own dirty windows.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)

We can be quick to criticize someone else, can’t we? Yes. Yes we can. Even when we all have issues that we need to address within ourselves first.

By Matthew Ruttan

–*Unfortunately, there was no citation with the clipping so I can’t credit the original source.
–Bible quotes are from the NIV.