In one of his books Haddon Robinson tells about a series of victory parades planned by General Pershing through many European capitals after World War I. He needed 27,000 soldiers to march in those parades. Each participant was to have two qualities. He was to have an unblemished military record, and second, he was to stand at least one meter, eighty-six centimeters tall.

Forty American soldiers, guarding an ammunition dump about one hundred miles from Paris, read with interest the notice about Pershing's victory marches. Each man in the company met the first qualification. The second condition, however, puzzled them. They did not know how high one meter, eighty-six centimeters was.

Since nobody in camp knew how tall that was, they began to compare themselves with one another. They stood back to back like children in a kindergarten until they knew the tallest through the shortest men in the company.

Slim, the tallest, figured he had it made. He kidded his buddies about taking a look at the girls in the capitals and sending back picture postcards. Shorty, on the other hand, knew that if he qualified, everyone else would, too. When a captain from headquarters arrived to find out if anybody qualified, the soldiers told him their problem, "We don't know how tall one meter, eighty-six centimeters is." So he translated the meter and centimeters into feet and inches and made a mark on the mess hall wall.

Some of the men looked at that mark and turned away, knowing they could not measure up to it. Others stood up against the wall, but they fell short of the mark by an inch or more. Finally Slim stretched himself as tall as possible, but he fell one-quarter of an inch short. Not one of them came to the six feet, one and one-fifth inches that one meter, eighty-six centimeters represents.

It is easy, isn't it, to feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments when we use other people as our standard? But what happens when we measure ourselves to Jesus? Do we love as he loved? Are we able to forgive as he forgave? Could we lay down our lives not just for our friends, but even for our enemies? Using him as our standard, none of us measure up.