Today's daily lesson comes from Matthew 7 verse 6:
"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you."
One thing we must learn to do in life is to guard our own hearts. Our value and worth as human beings is not subject to a referendum by the blood-thirsty and vicious. Our dignity as human beings is not determined by what others of hostility and malice think and say.
When we were children we wore our hearts on our sleeves and submitted ourselves to whatever insult any other mean-spirited child or adult hurled at us. We had not yet learned to protect ourselves. And unfortunately some of us later learned to protect ourselves in a negative way -- by becoming ourselves hard-hearted and mean.
But there is a more excellent way. The task of a spiritually mature person is to stay tender-hearted, but to also learn to protect their heart from the careless, mean, and abusive.
"Do not give what is holy to dogs," Jesus said. That doesn't mean don't feed or pet or be kind to them. It just means not to feed them with our sacred bread -- or our sacred worth.
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