Read Daniel 2:20-23

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3 CEB)

This past August, I went to the theater to see the film entitled, “The Gift.” It was a psychological thriller written and directed by Joel Edgerton who had played Rameses, the Pharaoh who opposed Moses in last year’s Biblical Epic, “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” The film is centered on a young married couple who recently moved from Chicago to California while recovering from a recent miscarriage. The husband had grown up there and the couple decided to move back there after losing the baby. While shopping for furniture for their new house, the husband (played by Jason Bateman) bumps into someone he knew back in high school named Gordon Mosely, who went by the nickname Gordo. The meeting was, of course, awkward to say the least and when it was time for the young couple to leave, you could see the relief on the husband’s face.

The story doesn’t end there. Gordo is a pretty resourceful guy and ends up showing up on their door step with a house-warming gift. They eat dinner with him and when he leaves the husband starts questioning his wife about the oddness of Gordo’s sudden appearance in their lives. Gordo continues to have interactions with the husband, and the wife, and starts to weird the couple out. It is at this point the husband starts to feel threatened by Gordo, and confronts him directly in order to send a clear message that he wants him out of their lives. Without giving anything else away, it is obvious the story doesn’t end there and that Gordo isn’t done harassing this young couple. But what becomes clear, is that as weird and offsetting as Gordo is, we begin to see that the husband has a good many skeletons in his closet and, should they be revealed, they could not only threaten him personally, but also the very fabric of his marital relationship.

If that teaser doesn’t get you to want to see the film, nothing will. As I was watching it I found myself being judgmental of the characters. Each of them had skeletons in their closet, things that they had hidden and buried for years. How could they do that? How could they possibly think that they would get away with trying to hide those things? It was in the moment of such judgment passing that I realized the hypocrisy in my own line of questioning. After all, which one of us doesn’t have skeletons in our closet? Which one of us doesn’t have dark aspects to our thoughts, our personalities and even, sometimes, our deeds? Each of us have thought or done something we are not proud of and each of us have buried those things and tried to move on from them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to move on from previous sins; however, when we do it in a way that is dishonest, when we do it in away that allows us to not come to terms with and repent for what we’ve done, then those sins become skeletons. While the closet door is closed, those skeletons hang silently on their noose-like hangers and we forget they’re there. We may even deceive ourselves into thinking they were never there to begin with, that we hadn’t sinned at all; however, when someone or something opens those doors, those skeletons bare themselves and clink together like wooden reeds in the wind.

Today’s challenge is two-fold. First, don’t judge others for the skeletons that are in their closets. For you know it is true that you have skeletons of your own that could just as easily be exposed and judged. Second, deal with your own skeletons. Acknowledge the sins and/or mistakes of your past and be repentant of them. I don’t mean that you have to shout them out to the world but, where reconciliation with others is needed, work hard to reconcile with them. If you work hard to clear out the skeletons in your own closet, and we all know there is a lifetime full, then you won’t have time to notice the skeletons in another’s closet. Even if you do, you won’t judge because you know you’ve been there; rather, you will reach out in love and offer them a helping hand in their closet cleaning.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.” – St. Jerome
PRAYER
Lord, help to acknowledge the skeletons in my closet so that I may truly move forward from them in grace. Amen.