When Bill Husted walked into his 40th high school reunion, he shook hands and hugged people for 20 minutes before realizing there were two high school reunions in the building that day and he was at the wrong one.
Husted, a technology writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, used that experience to illustrate one of his enduring axioms of computer troubleshooting: Check the obvious first. Before you replace the sound card, make sure the volume control is not turned down. If the modem isn’t working, check to see if it’s connected.
“Check the obvious first” can be a good principle for spiritual troubleshooting as well. Colossians 3:12-17 lists a dozen spiritual qualities that indicate a healthy soul. Prominent among them are compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and thankfulness.
Before criticizing our church or other Christian groups, we might ask the Lord to reveal our own shortcomings. Prior to ripping out the wires of relationships, we could check to see if patience and forgiveness are connected in our own heart.
It’s good to look inside our heart—to check the obvious first—even when it feels as if all our problems are caused by others. — David C. McCasland
I’ll check within my own heart first,
The obvious to see,
That faults I find in others
Are really faults in me. —D. De Haan
Christlike love is patient with the faults of others.