I fail too. James 4:11-12

James 4 NASB 11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor? Oh boy, who is not guilty of judging others? I have long been an advocate for children. It angers me when children are mistreated by their parents. We adults have no idea how easy it is to mess up our children's futures by our own actions and words. The last two years before we moved from Tucson, I worked at Gospel Rescue Mission. It is a homeless shelter for women and their children. Most of the clients there were homeless because of drugs or alcohol and the shelter offered drug rehab services for these women among the many other services. Each morning when I arrived I needed to read "report" from the day/evening before so I would know what was happening with the clients and the children. Often that report included who had not passed the random drug testing that was done and the consequences of that "failure". When I saw it involved the mom of one of the kids I worked with, I would get angry. I think I held that anger in fairly well and treated the offender with compassion but it still angered me inside. One morning, as I read report and there was another mom who had failed random drug testing, my disgust boiled up in me. And then God rebuked me. We all know what THAT feels like and its not good. That rebuke went something like this: "How dare you! These women are MY children, who are you to judge them?" Oh boy, got it Lord, I'm sorry. Please help me love them as you do. That was a turning point for me. After that, when one failed, I was truly compassionate for them and no longer angry at them. Of course, there are still other areas in my life I need to stop judging people but I'm trying. Blessings, Cecilia