3 “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? 4 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? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
To many of us as a means of self-deception convince ourselves that there is nothing wrong with us when we in fact have the equivalent of a redwood tree in our own eye. We are filled with infected cuts from undealt with emotional wounds and scars.
We don’t want to admit that we are wounded and for many of us we believe that since we can’t see emotional wounds that they aren’t real. We can feel emotional wounds and if we can feel them, they are real.
We are only able to help someone else with their wounds by healing our own first. That is what that phrase means. It’s a metaphorical way of saying worry about yourself and don’t worry about others. Fix yourself, don’t worry about fixing others. Heal yourself, don’t worry about healing others.
It’s when you heal yourself that you see how no one else could even do it, it had to be you all along. We can’t help anyone, we can’t heal anyone, and we certainly can’t fix anyone. We can only help ourselves.
That’s not to say if someone asks us to help them, we have to say no. If someone asks for help that is their way of helping themselves, so we may help someone when they ask for it. If someone doesn’t ask us for help, then we need to mind our own business and let them do their thing. Trust that they know what they are doing and if they don’t, they will ask for help.
How many of the world's problems could be solved if we all just minded our own business and stopped trying to live everyone else’s lives for them. A lot less stress, that’s for sure. Love and Peace!