Day 37
Exodus 23–24 | Romans 2 | Psalm 16
“Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” (Romans 2:1)
I was lying back in the dentist’s chair yesterday afternoon, my right hand resting on my ribs, when the hygienist glanced down, saw my gnarly scars, and asked the question I’ve answered a hundred times: “What happened to your hand?”
I gave my usual response—the quick version, the one that keeps things light. “I had a run-in with a table saw. The saw won.”
She chuckled, like they all do, then pressed for the real story.
So I told her. How the board kicked. How two fingers were severed and two others nicked. How, by the grace of God, three surgeons reattached them.
And then she did what almost everyone does. She told me her own “injury” story.
While opening a package in the kitchen one day, she accidentally poked the palm of her hand with the tip of a freshly sharpened knife.
I nodded, made the socially-appropriate, sympathetic facial expressions, and asked polite follow-up questions. But in my mind?
I was totally judging her.
What I wanted to say, and what I was actually thinking: That is absolutely nothing like what happened to me. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of comparing her scratch to my amputation. I wanted to tell her she had no idea—no idea at all—what it was like to have blood pooling in the crook of my elbow as I gripped my wrist to slow the bleeding, no idea about the sheer terror of getting loaded into an ambulance while my neighbors watched, no idea about the horror in the ER when four doctors gathered around my gurney and said, “Grant, this injury is far more extensive than we can treat here.” She had no idea about the suffocating anxiety that flooded my mind and body as the flight paramedics strapped me into the helicopter. She couldn’t begin to fathom the quiet, aching depression that settled over me on the morning when—for the first time since the accident—Talacey and Sophia left me home alone as they drove off to work and school.
No idea.
And then, like a sledgehammer, today’s Bible reading from Romans 2:1:
“…you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”
Conviction hit me.
Because in that dentist’s chair, I wasn’t just recounting my story—I was exalting myself. My suffering. My experience.
I had made myself the measuring stick, the gold standard of pain. And anyone who dared compare their lesser suffering to mine deserved to be dismissed.
As if suffering is a competition.
As if pain needs to be big enough before it matters.
The irony? I was doing the very thing I accused her of—minimizing someone else’s suffering.
But we are all guilty of it.
We rank pain. We weigh suffering. We measure brokenness on a scale, as if some wounds warrant grace and others don’t. But the gospel doesn’t work that way.
Romans 2 makes it clear—self-righteousness is just as damning as lawlessness. Judgmentalism is just as sinful as rebellion. And the same pride that leads one person to dismiss their need for grace is the same pride that makes me believe my pain is superior to someone else’s.
And I am guilty.
But this is where grace floods in.
Romans 2 doesn’t leave us crushed under the weight of our hypocrisy. It lifts our eyes to the kindness of God:
“Do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)
Repentance. That’s the only way forward.
And so I repent.
For the moments I have judged. For the ways I have made much of my suffering and little of someone else’s. For the lie that pride whispers: “No one understands what I’ve been through.”
Because Jesus does.
He is the only One who has ever truly suffered beyond comparison. The only One whose pain is immeasurable.
And yet, He never dismissed our pain. He never belittled our wounds. He entered into them. He carried them. He took them upon Himself, so that no matter what we face—whether a splinter or an amputation, a hard day or a devastating one—we would know we are never alone in it.
Isaiah 53:3 calls Him “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” He did not minimize suffering. He bore it in full.
So today, I will choose grace.
Because my pain does not make me superior.
My scars—as gnarly as they are—do not make me righteous.
And my suffering is not the standard—Jesus is.
Lord, forgive me for my pride. Teach me to see others’ pain through the lens of Your grace. Keep me from exalting my own suffering, and instead, let me exalt the One who suffered in my place. Amen.