PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

February 26, 2025

GETTING ONE’S OWN HOUSE IN ORDER

Recently, the table discussion at a dinner I was attending turned to all of the problems facing us as a nation.  Someone suggested that I needed to write an article about what a person might do to solve the issues facing our country.

In the days following the dinner scripture that surfaced as I thought about the person’s suggestion at the dinner comes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.  “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Mat. 7:3-5)

Jesus seems to be suggesting that the place anyone can begin to address the world’s problems is by beginning to get one’s own house in order.  Most of us find it much easier to deal with someone else’s problems than it is to deal with our own.  We are good at giving advice but find it difficult to take.  We can easily criticize the federal government for running up trillions of dollars’ worth of debt and at the same time ignore the fact that our personal financial situation is heavily dependent upon borrowed money.

The place we can help our nation begin to deal with the many issues facing it is by taking responsibility for our own situation and by looking for places that we can get our own house in order.  Sometimes bad things happen to us because another person’s mistakes.

Many years ago when I was taking clinical training at the Institute of Religion at the Texas Medical Center, one of our speakers said on average a patient in a hospital would receive the wrong medication one out ten times.  Sometimes such mistakes can have tragic consequences.   The speaker’s recommendation was that any time a person receives medication, no matter what the source, he or she checks to make sure it is the right medication and the right dosage.

As we face the future we have the choice of either being “reactive” or “proactive.”  We can either react to the mistakes of others or we can be proactive and anticipate such mistakes happening and take personal responsibility to prevent them from taking place.  An obvious application of this principle is driving.  The core of all safe driving courses is to be proactive.  My tendency is to be somewhat aggressive.  A mark of a proactive driver is to drive defensively, not aggressively.  I suspect I might do well to change my driving habits so that sometime in the future when another driver does make a mistake I will be prepared to act appropriately.

A way that all of us can begin to address the many issues facing our nation is by getting our own houses in order.  If even a significant number of us did, think the impact that it might have.

(This article was originally published February 26, 2012.  Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)