Moving past judgement.....

"If you judge people, you no have no time to love them." - Mother Teresa

I have done my fair share of judging, I will admit. And it is wrong, very wrong. I do not want to be judged in a wrong way. There is a time for "judgement" but not in the way that most people think of the term.

Judgement - the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing;

a proposition stating something believed or asserted.

I know that even if I don't publicly point fingers I have done so in my mind many times. I can't say I will never be judgmental again but I am trying my best to truly think before I pass an opinion on someone. Because I know how it feels to be judged wrongly or to even have gotten myself into a situation and been regretful of it but no one sees my regret or my remorse they only see the "sin" I've committed. Recently I have had to face a couple of people and situations that I had been very judgmental in. I hadn't spoken it out loud really but in my heart I was hard against these people. And then the other day I realized that these people might be hurting in the situations that they were currently in. That maybe they were regretful of where they were and how they got there but needless to say they are there! They need love and compassion and someone to help encourage and guide them in a better direction and onto a path that leads them in down the road God had originally intended for them. I have to remember that turning up my nose at them and pretending I'm better, when I'm not, isn't going to help them at all. It's so much easier to judge then to love sometimes. I'm not a naturally compassionate person - I tend to have a "you got yourself into this mess, you deal with it" kinda attitude but I'm seeing that attitude doesn't help me or encourage me to do better so why would it help others? So I am trying to reach out instead, reaching past my judgment and I'm finding that the people I have wrongly and too quickly judged are hurting and just want to be loved. You can become so wrapped up within yourself that you forget sometimes that other people need you.....and they need you to look past their faults and see them for the needful people they are. Take the time to look past yourself and past the judgment you might not even realize you pass and love someone.