For the last five days, I’ve walked past the Cozy Coup sitting in my driveway and gotten a dose of humility.  Two years ago, I looked at a neighbor’s house where a Cozy Coup was in the front yard, and I told my wife that we would never allow our children to do that.

“It looks trashy,” I said.

Oh well, I guess our front yard looks trashy now.

I wish I could say that was the only time I’ve judged other people’s children or marriages before I started my own family.  It wasn’t.

I still remember sitting at dinner with a young couple, watching an argument flare up between them, and resenting them for making things so uncomfortable.

I will never do that, I told myself.

Ask my in-laws if my wife and I have ever had an argument in front of them.  As it turns out, we are human.

Life has a way of putting you in your place, of showing you that your greatest weaknesses are the actions you judge most harshly.  It has a way of proving the truth of Romans 2:1: “[I]n passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”  Well, maybe you don’t practice those things now, but keep judging harshly, and you probably will.

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