Christian Living

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The BIG Picture
© 2007

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Emily Prescott, a 19 year old sophomore at the Oklahoma Baptist University, sat down on a Shawnee Mall bench after a long, pushy four and half hour day of bargain hunting throughout many stories of the mall. Putting her more than half dozen plastic bags on a bench next to her, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief that her shopping frenzy had come to an end.

“What a hassle it is to try to be first to get the best deals! Gosh, this can be a real headache!” But when she looked across the bench at everything she had purchased, she felt proud of all the money she had saved. “Wait till the girls see all of the really pretty clothes I bought and the discounts it got. I’ll bet they’ll be really jealous of what I’ve been able to get! Whoa!”

Then she noticed an overweight woman in the Braums Dairy and Ice Cream store directly across from her happily eating her way through what looked to be a double ice cream sundae. “Why would that huge woman sit there eating such a huge sundae when she is so darn big? Doesn’t she realize how gross she looks? If I was her, I’d go on the biggest crash diet you’d ever saw to lose some weight! What a glutton she is! And how fat!” Emily thought to herself. In spite of her thoughts, Emily continued to watch this woman fascinated by the mountainous layers of ice cream, whipped cream and syrup she kept shoving into her mouth.

Suddenly the woman caught Emily’s staring eyes. Embarrassed Emily quickly turned away knocking some of her bags to the floor. As Emily stood up to pick them up, Emily began to realize what a shopping binge she had been on. Six pairs of shoes, twelve pairs of jeans, twelve new shirts and blouses, four gold colored chains, two make up kits, more than dozen under things… Thinking about her own excessive buying, Emily realized she may have judged a woman’s behavior as gluttonous without considering the woman’s circumstance or circumstances. But Emily did realize she did not need all of the things she had purchased.

At that point Emily felt ashamed for thinking negative thoughts about a woman she had never met and did not know why she was eating such a large sundae. She recalled Jesus’ statement, “Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not consider the beam that is in your eye?”

Emily concluded that we all have our own frailties we should consider assessing before being critical of someone else’s.

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