Today I will:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 (ESV)
Very often little things that bother us in the lives of others are problems we are blind to in our own lives. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked, "How can you think of saying, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye: when you can't see past the log in your own eye?'" (Matthew 7:4 NLT). If we would heed Jesus' words in this instance, then we should pay attention to our pet peeves and use them as a place to begin examining our own ways.
The quickest-often automatic-form of judging others is actually anger. When do we get angry? We might say it's when we are offended, when we feel unjustly treated, or when something doesn't seem fair to us. We actually get angry because somehow our self-image has been challenged or our core motives have been hampered. In other words, we get angry because someone has interfered with what we want or threatened our position or authority. How often do such outbursts begin in our minds with, "Well! Just who do they think they are?" when perhaps the better question might be, "Just who do I think I am?"
.. Even if I am the CEO of my company, I need to realize that the CEO of life itself said, "Whatever measure you use in judging others ... will be used to measure how you are judged" (Matthew 7:2 NLT). Perhaps when anger rises to the surface, we would be better off asking ourselves why we are getting angry rather than releasing that anger on someone else. Most likely, we won't have a more honest "time to remove the log in our eye” indicator than that!