Log In My Eye

This past week in our very excellent Veritas Press Bible class we were reading about the fruits of the spirit and decided to look at them up close. The first fruit we looked at was gentleness. The definition we came up with was - being calm, not wild or harsh or stern or rough or abrasive or caustic. To be soothing and tender to others.
The first few days I watched everyone and noted when they were not being gentle. I really wanted to point it out to them it was so obvious. Then about day three I was disciplining one of my kids and I just didn't think they were getting my point. I had to make them understand what they were doing wrong so I spoke a little louder and made my point in a way that they could see what I meant and how I felt about it and basically implied that what they were doing was going to ruin their life forever. It was something like forgetting to feed the cat. I was harsh and stern and oh yes- rough and caustic. There wasn't a tender word in the whole exchange. Seems the fruit had fallen right off my tree. I was seeing the grapes in everyone else's eye and missed the watermelon in mine.
Also this week each of our girls received a gift of a book cover and apparently only one of them knew how to use it appropriately.