Looking Out the Window

While I have several posts rolling around in my Windows Live Writer to finish, this morning I just wanted to share a quote from the Relief Society Broadcast I attended last night:

My dear sisters, each of you is unique. You are different from each other in many ways. There are those of you who are married. Some of you stay at home with your children, while others of you work outside your homes. Some of you are empty-nesters. There are those of you who are married but do not have children. There are those who are divorced, those who are widowed. Many of you are single women. Some of you have college degrees; some of you do not. There are those who can afford the latest fashions and those who are lucky to have one appropriate Sunday outfit. Such differences are almost endless. Do these differences tempt us to judge one another?

Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who worked among the poor in India most of her life, spoke this profound truth: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” The Savior has admonished, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” I ask: Can we love one another, as the Savior has commanded, if we judge each other? And I answer—with Mother Teresa—“No; we cannot.”

—President Thomas S. Monson

President Monson’s entire talk was wonderful, he began with a story that truly set the stage.  While I can’t repeat it word for word, the story basically was this:

One day a woman and her husband were sitting down to breakfast.  Looking out the window, she saw her new neighbor had hung out laundry to dry.  Much to her dismay the laundry was dirty.  She was shocked, commenting to her husband that someone needed to teach their neighbor how to wash laundry. 

This scene was repeated several times over the next few weeks, each time the woman was disgusted at how her new neighbor would hang dirty laundry up to dry.  One morning, however, she saw that her neighbor had finally learned how to wash her laundry - every item hanging on the line was spotless. Commenting about it to her husband he sheepishly replied, “Oh, no dear, I finally got up early and washed our dirty windows.  Our neighbor’s laundry has been just fine all this time.”

Isn’t that just like life?  I know I find it so easy to made judgements and criticize others through my dirty windows.  I need to spend more time working on my own life, and less focused on the perceived faults of others.