Judgement

The word judgement is defined as the ability to make a decision or form an opinion by discerning and evaluating.  I got that from the good old Webster's dictionary.  We are people make judgments every day but how many of those are accurate?  When you make a decision or form an opinion about something do you jump to conclusions or actually discern and evaluate?  There have been times when I've just looked at something and judged it.  Or I've taken someone else's opinion and formed my own without knowing all the facts or the whole story.  We are all guilty of jumping to conclusions or judging someone or something without knowing the whole story.  However, what if we knew the whole story? I love a picture I found a while ago of a woman standing in a storm and the words "Don't judge her, you don't know what storms I've asked her to go through"  Powerful right?
Think about it......you see a person in the grocery store buying her kids candy and pop.....in the past I've thought wow that's junk she's feeding her kids but now I think maybe it was a treat for something that they earned????  I went to the store last week to stock up on snacks for our weekend at the Kansas Junior Livestock Show. When I was checking out, the woman behind me was very vocal about the reason our kids are obese in America when parents fill them with junk food.  Normally I would have just shrugged it off because I mean my cart had some twizzlers, chips, lemonade, cheez-its, oreos, and cookies.  I also had apples, grapes, cheese-sticks and granola bars to balance out some of that.  But I turned around and told the woman that she formed an opinion without the facts.  The facts are my kids were going to be very busy at KJLS this weekend and it would be nice to have some easy to grab snacks for them to eat as well as the fact that my children are far from obese!  It wasn't a normal shopping trip for me, it was a special trip to have some snacks to feed my kids and the candy and cookies were to be rewards when they finished showing their animals.  I point blank told her not to judge me without knowing the facts and if she was going to judge me to keep it to herself.  It was very out of character for me because I don't normally speak up, I would have just fumed about it and kept my opinion to myself.  But you see, I've been judged for the past year.  I've been gossiped about, I've lost people I thought were my friends because they didn't like my choices. I've been a victim of unfair judgments made by people who don't know my story only what they've heard from other people.  I've seen people so afraid of what other people will think if they are seen with me act like I don't exist when they are around those people even though they just spoke to me the week before.  I'm sorry I thought I graduated too many years ago to count!  Oh and the best ones are the ones who pretended to be my friends just to be able to talk about me to other people.  I can't change the way people behave, I can only change the way I respond to it.  You see, no one knows the storms I've had to face.  They may think they know, they may say oh if that were me I would do this and this but you see you never really know how you would react to something until you are in that situation.  Jer 29:11 is my verse.  God has my life in the palm of his hand and he knows the plans he has for me.  He knows the days of my life and he knows the tests He will put me through.  I have the opportunity every day to choose the path that leads to eternal life or choose the wrong path.  But no matter what path I choose, God is always there with me and willing to forgive me when I make a mistake.  We all have storms to weather in our lives.  Maybe your storm is financial, maybe it's the loss of a child, maybe it's the loss of someone close to you, perhaps it's the betrayal of a friend, spouse, family member, child.......we all have storms to weather and our job as Christians is to help each other through those storms.  Not to judge because if we look in the mirror we are not perfect.  God doesn't expect us to be perfect!  That's why he instructed us not to judge and that's why he sent us the ultimate Savior to take on our sins and give us eternal life.  The best thing you can do when you want to judge someone is to learn all the facts and try to help that person through the storms of their lives.  And if you can't help them through the storm, pray for God to put people in their lives to help them.
If I can help you through the storms in your life, feel free to comment.  I would love to pray for you.  Hope you all have a blessed day and remember we all have our own crosses to bear and storms to weather.