It is always easier to look at instead of within.
Have you ever watched a bully in action?
They tend to find the weak spot in someone and then hit it relentlessly.
Grace Rembinski is a singer/songwriter who tells her story about bullying.
Grace first experienced bullying when she was in 6th grade by a group of people she considered her friends. It began when she started singing and performing at the local community theatre. Soon after, she found out they were finding any reason to make fun of her. “My “friends’ would walk by me in the school halls or in our neighborhood like I wasn’t there. I was being made fun of for my ‘big crooked teeth,’ for being a ‘nerd,’ for dressing differently than everyone else, and for the way my hair looked. They said I was ‘different,’ and I was feeling left out of everything,” said Grace.
One day Grace decided she didn’t deserve to be treated that way. “I was done going through the things I had gone through. I stopped trying to make excuses for the way I was and made new friends that loved me for me. I also just didn’t care what people thought anymore. This was probably the hardest thing for me to do.
To embrace the things that made me ‘different’ and to just be myself.”
Things that make us “different” and “just be ourselves.”
While the scripture verse for this week isn’t about bullying or “being ourselves” it is about the fact that God loves us for who we are even in our ICK, dysfunction, and sin. God loves us each EXACTLY for being OURSELVES!
And – it is perhaps a nudge to look at OUR OWN LIVES and dysfunction and quit worrying about pointing the finger at other people.
Jesus was at the temple teaching and the religious people brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and had her stand before them. The religious leaders were ready to stone her for her sin, but Jesus simply stated, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
So maybe instead of picking out the flaws in other people, we should first start with our own.
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
John 8:7