Bic Stick Pen or Cigarette?

In the late 80’s, I taught at Calvary Christian School and lived down the street in church housing. I was going home one day during lunchtime to get some papers that I had left behind that morning. As I walked, I was scanning a test for that afternoon shuffling papers with both hands, so I put the Bic stick pen in my mouth rather than drop it. Unknown to me, one of my middle school students saw me from a distance and thought that the white pen in my mouth was a cigarette. Rather than asking me about it, she assumed for years that I had secretly been smoking … until she graduated and became bold enough to ask me about it. We both had a good laugh after the truth came out. But what a conflict she had in her mind for so many years. Hey, have you ever thought that you had seen or heard something only to find out later that you had been mistaken? I have. I thought that I heard my granddad say a bad word. It was years later that I heard him use the same phrase - but it was not a bad word at all. I had heard him wrong. I was mistaken about my granddad’s character for years. Hey, Jesus said in John 7:24, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” How can we “judge righteous judgement”? Well, we can’t! We can never know someone’s motive. We can never know someone’s intent. The only answer is to leave the “righteous judgment” to God. Don’t judge at all and you’ll never be disappointed. Hard to do, but important to do.