3.1.12

Proverbs 14:30 (CEV) It is healthy to be content, but envy can eat you up.

My Thoughts

Have you ever put something on the counter and it stayed there so long it became so much a part of the room that you quit noticing it? Of course you have most all of us have at some point. Our homes, our cars, the stuff we have all becomes this way when we don't stop to think about it...we get up and get dressed...do all that morning stuff and out the door we go never really seeing what is in front of us.  Then somebody comes along and has something that is new and shinny and we start wanting what they have! Often to the point of thinking "I never get anything we want, and it's not fair!"

As humans we do silly things...we have such silly thoughts all because we don't stop to look at the big picture! We could be the person that gets a new car every two years and be jealous of a person that drove their car until it was held together by wires when they finally get them a new car. We so often don't stop to think before we start to want!!

I believe that one of the reasons that God ask us to send up thanks to Him for all we have is so that we will take time to notice all that we do have!! We often have so much that we have storage buildings full because our houses won't hold what we have been given by God.  There are yard sells everywhere on pretty weekends where people are selling what the "had to have" so that can buy that thing "they can't live without."  Commercials on TV tell us "Look be jealous your neighbor has more!" "It's okay to spend money you don't have!" even if it is something we don't even need.

We make ourselves craze with envy!!  We exhaust ourselves paying for things that yesterday we "had to have!"  Sleeping pill companies can pay a fortune for commercials to compete with each other because people can't sleep from worry, worry about how they are going to pay for things they have already sold in yard sells. All because we get caught up in envy!

So much of what we put ourselves through could be stopped in its tracks if we just learned to be content... If each morning before we went out the door we stopped and thanked God for 100 of the things we see around us... A hundred things? Everyday? I bet if we listed 100 of the things we see in our houses each day, that it would take a lot longer than you can imagine to get through the list of all that is in our homes. It could take some people I know more than a week of thank you's to get through their closet.

Say you are a shoe collector... I collect knitting looms myself... LOL. But say you are a shoe collector, you love shoes!.. how much easier would it be not to envy somebody else's shoes if that morning you had looked at each and every pair of shoes you had and thanked God for each and every pair? It would so change our perspective!!  I know that if I were to take a "grateful inventory" of each and every loom I had I would find that I didn't need a new loom...I have one that will accomplish what I want. As much as I love my looms I forget to notice they are there and that I need to thank God for them!

Proverbs 14:30 tells us "It is healthy to be content, but envy can eat us up!"  We have medicine for that envy, it is called thankfulness. So next time we see a "pair of shoes" that somebody else has, lets stop and make a mental picture in our heads of each pair of shoes we have and thank God individually for every pair. Even if we have to wait until we get home to remember them all. Let's be thankful before we act on that compulsion and see if our envy goes away.