Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Consider your inner critic. Your inner critic helps to protect you from the shame or embarrassment of failure. Your inner critic is what pushes you to work harder, so that you are prepared. Your inner critic may have pushed you to the top of your class.

You may have your inner critic to credit for who you are today. But over time, your inner critic can take its toll.

The message that you need to try to be your best, starts to sounds like, “You will never be good enough.” And here is the catch, rather than working to attain something great, it starts to feel like we are working to keep from failing. So, when we do achieve what we set out to do, we feel more relieved that we didn’t fail than we feel excited about our accomplishment.

If this sounds familiar, it actually gets worse. For most people with a strong inner critic, our success doesn’t feel genuine. We reason, “The competition was light that day” or “I got lucky.” Moreover, while we may keep achieving, it is with diminishing returns. We look forward with fear, unable to look back or around with a sense of joy.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

We are human, mortal. On one hand, this is an invitation to be honest about our limitations, our brokenness, our sinfulness. We are not perfect. With our thoughts and our words and our deeds, we let ourselves and others down. But this is not a death sentence. We are not meant to live under a cloud of guilt or shame. We are not perfect, but we are not expected to be perfect. We daily experience the grace of God. We are forgiven.

Our imperfections are seen, we cannot hide them. But rather than harsh judgment, we receive God’s warm embrace. We are wrapped in love, washed in the waters of baptism and fed with the body and blood of Christ. We are sinners and God has an endless supply of grace.

To our surprise, we are also met with grace from one another.