Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Most people these days take pictures with their phones. Some, like me, also like to use an SLR camera. One where you can change settings and do more manually. For me it’s a hobby but still something I like to do. So, do you know what the F-Stop is? The F-Stop is the number that your camera shows you when you change the size of the lens aperture. This changes how much light come into the camera. A small F-Stop, like F2.8, lets in more light than a larger number, such as F11 which is a smaller amount of light, due to it being a fraction. It also affects the depth of field. A small F-Stop, such as F4, will focus only on a small part of the picture, making the rest a bit blurry. A larger F-Stop, such as F32, will make more of the picture come into clear focus.
So, what is your F-Stop? Most of the time, we as Christians, try to focus on God. We need to. We need to focus on our walk with Him. We need to focus on our relationship with Him and His promises for Jesus’ return. This should be our primary focus. But sometimes, we use the smaller F-Stop. We focus in on some small thing that someone else does that we don’t feel follows along with what the Bible says. We begin to lose focus on the grand picture of God and focus on this one small thing that takes our focus away from where it should be, God.
We can lovingly point things out to others, but we need to remember the plank in our own eye. We need to remember to keep our focus on the One who needs it. Don’t let something someone else is doing take your attention away from where it should be. Don’t let that thing about someone else come between us and our Heavenly Father. What the other person is doing, or not doing, is between them and God. Lovingly express we disagree but then turn our focus back to God, His word, and His promises. We need to remember that Jesus died for all of us.
So, use the larger F-Stop. See more of God’s word in full focus. Keep a sharp eye on His word and our individual walk with Him.