Nobody’s Perfect, BUT Everybody Ought To Try

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

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Lately, I learned that I used to see life like an alien. I was easily in awe at many things good and easily disillusioned at many things unpleasant. Well, not anymore. I guess growing up, aging, and experience have installed in me a more balance view towards life and people in general. When people do wonderful things, I do give them credits due. But, I won’t be surprised when the same people mess up. People are just people. Sometimes they get things right, sometimes they don’t. The greater the person, the less he messes up. But, no one is perfect.

This I’m saying not to justify any mistakes. When we’re wrong, we’re wrong. There will be no excuses. But, just as when I do a stupid mistake, I want people not to confine their views towards me on that one thing I don’t get right, but myself and what I’ve done as a whole; then, I think, everybody is hoping for the same thing. Forgiveness and a chance to rectify – we all want a second chance.

A few years ago, I could be very judgmental and condemning. I see things as black and white, without room for compassion, patience, and forgiveness. I didn’t try to understand why people did what they did. I was a Pharisee.

But, now that I’ve been through my fair share of difficult times when I could see that I am not immune to the very mistakes I used to condemn people for making, I can see that the challenge in life is that things can look like a mesh of threads and it’s no easy task to unravel them. Life can be that complicated.

The way the Lord Jesus Christ dealt with people is something I need to imitate. Although He wants us to forgive seventy-seven times, He also wants us to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect. He went through the challenges and temptations that we humans face. He understands our imperfection and so He forgives each time. Yet, in His compassion, he is not giving up to make us more like Him either.

Oswald Chambers wrote sometime ago that when we’re well trained in harmonizing our minds with the Holy Spirit, we will see things the way GOD see things. What does not interest Him, will not interest us. Life will become simple. I guess, as Christians, we are shown what is right. But, perhaps, sometimes we work around it because we’re not harmonizing our minds with the Lord completely. We have parts of our life which we have not surrendered to Him. I have mine and I have to say that I’ve been struggling for some time now. Well, that is life. You can only get so many things right, but not everything.

Yet, the bar is set and it will not be lowered: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

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