A few years ago someone owed me money.  I had earned it legitimately.  The person had promised to send it.  I became a bit obsessed about it, checking the mailbox regularly and growing more upset in my inner life as the weeks went by.  I wasn’t going hungry, my children were clothed and fed but I wanted the money.  One day, I don’t know why, I remembered that I owed someone money that I had never paid.  I felt terrible about it, wrote out a check right away and sent it in the mail with an apology.  I began to wonder how often I was doing that about other things.  While driving, I noticed I was getting agitated with people who didn’t use their blinkers, but I was planning to turn and didn’t have mine on either.  I would get upset over people not answering emails and then notice several that I had not responded to for too long a time.   I would get annoyed if the boys didn’t thank Diane for all she did for them and then remember that I hadn’t expressed my appreciation to them for mowing the lawn or taking out the trash.  This is an affliction of mankind.  We can all too easily see the faults in others while having glaring errors of our own that we cannot see.   Jesus said that we can even have a beam in our own eye and be concerned about getting a piece of sawdust out of somebody else’s eye!  There are some classic stories about this in the Bible.  I think of David and Nathan the prophet in 2 Samuel 12 and the text in Matthew 21 we plan to study on Sunday.  Paul approached this malady from a didactic standpoint in Romans 2.  He asked the reader, “You therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself?”  Ouch.  We humans may be “at the top of the food chain” but we’re not very quick about noticing our own flaws.  I really had to chuckle the first time I understood the beginning and end of Psalm 139.  In the beginning of the Psalm David wrote, “O Lord You have searched me and known me…”  He went on to include all the minutiae that God knows.  The Psalm ends with a prayer, this is how one translation states it,  “O God, let the secrets of my heart be uncovered, and let my wandering thoughts be tested” AND, the NIV translates the next verse, “See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  In other words, “God you know me better than I know me, please show me me and help me on to life.”  I think you’ll see on Sunday why a prayer like that is so very important.  Oh, and the check finally arrived…J