Encouragement for my soul

Wow, here's some encouragement for my soul and maybe yours too.

It is from an article by Jill Briscoe, executive editor of the magazine Just Between Us. She refers to an incident on 9/11 when she was stuck, with several plane-loads of people in Newfoundland when air traffic was suspended. They got hungry and she remembered some cookies she had bought at Heathrow Airport before boarding the plane. Then, despite her desire to help others, she ended up eating all the cookies herself.

"The cookies represent any time we do the wrong thing instead of doing the right thing - or when people diminish us with words or actions and we "eat them" ~ It represents any time we fail as a daughter, son, grandparent, mother, father, friend, leader, or follower. All of us will fail and fail again. Remember, we are fallen people living in a fallen world, but we can't allow others to judge us as failures. There is only one judgement seat and it is most thoroughly occupied by the Lord Himself, who died for us...When others, by innuendo, impugn and degrade us, even if sometimes we indeed do it wrong, God whispers love and affirmation to our heart, if we let Him...

We must not think less of ourselves than God thinks of us. And one glorious day we will never do it again. I can't wait!"  

from "I Ate the Cookie!" by Jill Briscoe, Just Between Us, Summer 2009.