Need to Be Perfect

Be perfect as your God in Heaven is perfect.
-Matthew 5: 48

Happy New Year! How many New Year resolutions are under review?
I hope the word perfect does not add to your already high-stress life! We may not like the pressure placed on us when we are required to be perfect, but we still strive for perfection in our own way. Wanting to be perfect in the eyes of others is exhausting and debilitating. Matthew wants us to be perfect because our God in Heaven is perfect. What does that mean?

A father and daughter’s tradition was to work on the car on Sundays after worship. One Sunday, the father was under the car trying to remove a rusty screw. He asked his daughter to hand him a screwdriver from the toolbox. She found the best, shiny screwdriver and handed it to her Dad. After a while, the Dad asked his daughter for another screwdriver because the one she gave did not fit. The daughter found the next best screwdriver and handed it to her father; the father said the second screwdriver she provided did not fit either. After passing her Dad every screwdriver she could find, the exasperated daughter finally handed a rusty screwdriver with a broken handle, saying, “This is all I have left.” After a while, she could hear her father say with joy, PERFECT!

Maybe this is what Matthew meant by “ Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect?” A rusty screwdriver with a broken handle in God’s hands.

God Bless You!
Simon