A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
'That laundry is not very clean,' she said. 'She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.'
Her husband looked on, but remained silent.Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.
About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: 'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.'
Her husband said, 'I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.'
And so it is with life.
It's so true.
"What we see when watching others depends on the window through which we look."
God has been reminding me that so much of the way I speak or act is framed by my own experience, my own way of filtering the world. Friends, the way you and I think, the way we feel, the way in which we hear things or interpret things is based on so many things, that the only real answer is to give one another grace...
It's true of marriage too. The way your spouse hears what you say may have nothing to do with what you actually said - but if his filter is one of condemnation, then that is what he will hear. If hers is one of low self esteem, everything will seem like a criticism. It may explain why someone you know always shies away from you. It may explain sudden outbursts of anger with an in-law.
It's true even of sex. I love the illustration given in Sheet Music (I reviewed it a while ago). Dr. Kevin Leman says the marriage bed is the most crowded one of all. Because it's not just you and your spouse, but your parents and your spouse's parents - and those 6 individuals all see sex differently, all see marriage differently, and all have their own set of spoken and unspoken rules.
So how then do we live?
Surely only in Christ - with his eyes for one another, with the Spirit being our lens.
Surely?
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