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A man named James having trouble with his wife not hearing him complained to the doctor. The doctor, in his wisdom, suggested a test before recommending a hearing aid. He advised the man to ask his wife a question standing forty, thirty, twenty and then ten feet away from her. The man tried the test. At different distances, he asked, “Darling, what are you cooking for dinner?”
Fed up with no response from her the fourth time. He drew close to her ear and screamed the fifth time “Can’t you hear me?” He paused for a moment. His wife then looked sternly at him and replied “James, I replied to you five times that I’m cooking chicken noodles for dinner. Have you gone deaf?”
Struck by the reply, James realized it was he who was hearing impaired and not his wife.
Some of us spend so much time judging, criticising and finding fault with others that we fail to see our own faults and weaknesses. Such people spend little time for introspection. It requires great humility to accept one’s own shortcomings.
Messiah presents a parable “Two men went up to a temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his chest and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ Messiah said, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves, will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Messiah said, “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?”
A story is told of a baker who regularly bought a pound of cheese from a local farmer. One day, suspecting that the pounds of cheese he purchased were underweight, he began weighing them. To his shock, he found them underweight indeed.
He complained to the local judge. At the trial, the Judge asked the farmer “Do you have a measuring-weight?”
“No Your Honor” he replied.
“Then how do you measure the cheese you sell to this baker. It is always underweight?”
“Your honor, I have measuring scales. But for weighing a pound of cheese, I use a pound of bread that this very same baker sells to everyone in this village”.
The Judge dismissed the case and had the baker arrested.
