Because I grew up in the church attending Sunday School, Worship, and Midweek Bible Study, when I hear scripture verses quoted in the defense of specific moral superiority or sanctimonious “rightness,” my eyes glaze over and my hearing gets muffled.
Therefore, with the backdrop of social negativity and finger pointing of our times, I’ve resolved this year to read what Jesus says on any given subject (the red letter verses) and not take his words out of context. Oh, how the diamonds I’ve already re-discovered shine!
Take for example Matthew 7:6 when Jesus says, “Do not give dogs what is holy; do not throw your pearls to the pigs; they will only trample on them and turn and tear you to pieces.”
As I age, I’m more and more convicted of the sacredness of my own soul and am committed to not waste my emotional reserves on those who sit upon a scorner’s throne, tossing egregious contempt my way.
I used to be an extreme people pleaser, eagerly appropriating another’s offensive behavior on myself to avoid conflict, retreating to tearful solitude, vowing to do better. Thank goodness, that is now way, way behind me. In this scripture passage, I think Jesus is tellimg me to not throw myself away on people who don’t appreciate who I am.
I will certainly remember the visual of Matthew 7:6!
On whom are you wasting your hard-earned self ?
No coward soul is mine
No tremble in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glorious shine
And faith shines equal arming me from fear
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immorality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And thou wert left alone
Every existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor storm that his might could render void
Since those art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed