Judgment requires more of us than we realize. We take the small portion of a situation that we can see and try to make it tell us the whole story. We decide what something means, what should have happened, and what must happen next. Beneath all that thinking is the belief that peace will come once we have reached the right conclusion. Yet the conclusions themselves often become the burden.

Today’s lesson offers another way of seeing. I can look without immediately deciding. I can leave a person, a circumstance, or even myself free to be more than what I presently understand. This does not mean that I will never be guided to speak or act. It means that I wait for clarity instead of manufacturing it from partial evidence.

There is relief in admitting, I do not know what this means. In that open space, the Holy Spirit can show me what my judgment would have hidden. Today I lay down the strain of explaining everything. I leave creation free to be itself, and I allow peace to return to both what I see and the one who is seeing.