I have a log in my eye

“Hello, it is so nice to see you.  Just a minute, I can’ t see you clearly. I have to take this log out of my eye first.  The log has been in my eye for at least a year, maybe longer.”

 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?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  Matthew 7:3-4

I own a dog. She is a big dog. When she barks, you can probably hear her through a closed window.  When we let our dog, Martha outside to go to the bathroom, we leave her outside and come back in the house. To get to the back door you have to walk downstairs from the main floor and let her out the walkout  basement door. There are no stairs from our second story back deck. Martha usually takes several minutes to find the perfect spot, so we leave her there and come back inside. We don’t wait in the basement for her, we walk back up the stairs and wait for her to bark to tell us she wants to come back in.

She usually says,”Bark”, one quick, polite, staccato bark which means, “Hey guys, I pooped let me back in.”  Sometimes when she barks, I am on the second floor of the house. I don’t go outside right away and get her. She may bark three or four times, okay twenty-three times, at regular one minute intervals, until I go and get her.

Sometimes the children let her out, and I don’t know she is outside and finished going to the bathroom, until I am in the bathtub relaxing.

I have forgotten Martha  outside and gone grocery shopping, leaving her in the backyard.  She usually sits quietly enjoying the view in the backyard. If someone walks by, she will say, “Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark,bark, bark, bark,” until I come down and get her, or the people have walked past her.   She is very loud when she tells them, “Hey, what are you doing walking on my sidewalk?  You didn’t ask me. Hey, did you know my name is Martha? I moved here from California. I can smell you. You smell like bacon. What is your name? I like to eat the cats food…”

My dog barks.

I went to my neighbor’s house yesterday morning at 6:15a.m. to ask her to get her dog to be quiet. I was mad her dog woke me up. I wasn’t very kind.  Yes, she shouldn’t  allow her dog to bark so early in the morning. But. I can learn to not be so easily annoyed.

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult. Proverbs 12:16

I was a fool.

I wrote her a quick e-mail yesterday morning after I spoke harshly to her, and apologized for being so angry. Today I need to make amends to her face. I will look for her when she comes home from work tonight and apologize.

The log is out of my eye now.  Do I see a speck in your eye?

Have you ever been a fool?