Article - "The Mercy of God in a Broken World"

At All Saints, we are a group of people who, on the outside, seem to have everything put together. We dress well, smell good (at least I think we do), and, for the most part, are nice to people. Most people would call us privileged (and in many ways, that is absolutely true). With these "rose colored" views of ourselves, we can sometimes think that we are better than we actually are, and that we should have mercy on the "less fortunate" or "tougher" areas.

Jean Larroux, who is pictured above, wrote an article dealing with this very subject. He is a pastor of Lagniappe Church in Bay St. Louis, MS, an area that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. In his article, he argues that we need to take a good look at ourselves, so that we can understand who we are, and subsequently know how gracious God is to us.

Here is the article:

"I had always considered myself to be fairly handsome. I knew that I was being a bit generous to myself, but hey, it was me. There were moments when I knew that I could stand to lose a few pounds here and there. My jeans would feel a bit snug—I’d just figure the dryer shrunk them (keep in mind they were two years old). The notches on my belt kept moving out to cleaner, unused notches leaving the inner ones distressed and worn out like the collar of an old shirt. I was, as my friend Jeffrey Lancaster says, “body dismorphic”—I saw myself as thinner than I actually was. That self-misperception was about to change."

To read the rest of the article, click here.

What do you all think of this article? What would an accurate view of ourselves entail?