The sin of envy is as damaging an emotion as it’s commonly felt. We are all given to comparison. Yet, we forget that life is an ebb and flow business. Some appear to get ahead, others appear to fall behind it, but the distance of years is longer than any of us imagine. It’s amazing how life evens the results.
Two Habits for Hope
Two things we can do will help provide great hope for our future: firstly, forget about the competition—life is not a competition; secondly, we should keep trying and not give up easily.
Both of these two things are difficult to do; they are easy to forget. But we are rewarded with hope when we remember and apply them.
Accepting Our Potential
Many of us are born with dreams that are unrealisable. We may wonder why God has sown such a hope in our hearts. Perhaps it’s because of the process of maturation; nobody gets everything they want. Accepting our potential is a key to becoming mature.
I once wanted to be a great sportsperson. It’s what I lived for in my dreams. Yet, it’s clear looking back now that I was never going to achieve that. Not achieving our greatest of dreams empowers those dreams that we do fulfil. Victory is sweet eventually. We all have some things to be proud of.
Observing the Varying Seasons of Life
Achievement is never a continuous concept for anyone. Every single person has seasons of preparation or abeyance to endure or ahead of them.
We are blessed to become casual and causal observers of life. By casual, we take it as an informal interest; enjoying the observations and making sense of them in truth. By causal, we seek to understand why events and situations and outcomes happen. We look for the cause, again in truth—for our emotions of envy will only get in the way.
Wisdom is the art of practising interest in life, but by being distant enough, emotionally, that we are not engaged to the point of uncontrolled or straying emotion.
Observation is fun if we’ll engage in it without thought of prize.
Remembering the Duration of Years
Most of us live longer than we anticipate the length of our life. In other words, as we look back we do and achieve so much more than we can even remember.
It bears careful consideration: life is more than just today or tomorrow or next week or next year. God does have a plan for us; a plan to prosper our future (Jeremiah 29:11).
A worthy saying:
Life’s not in the envy that mounts, but instead where it’s heading; that’s where it counts.
Our best wisdom is trusting in where our lives are heading.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment