Tel me if you have ever been in this situation: You are struggling. You are trying to have everything together all the time buy you are always falling short. You look over at your friend (be it online or in real life) and it always seem like they have it together. The best houses, the best clothes, the best behaved children. The more you look at their lives, and other people in your similar situation, you become dissatisfied, and begin wishing to have what they have.
That my dear friends is what envy is about:
Envy: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.
From A Child’s Perspective
I love teaching the Ten Commandments to my children, and while doing so, I also realize that it’s an ongoing process. Even though learning about religion is very important to me, I like to make sure that they understand the commandments in a way that they will understand.
Envy is explained to children as wanting the good things that other people have–like toys or treats or things like that. Of course it’s easy to explain things in a way that a child could get it according to their wants and desires, but it’s easy to over look ourselves when we are reviewing it.
Why We Easily Forget
Sometimes, I think we forget about this commandment, because it’s easier felt. Let’s think about this, whenever we are feeling envious of others around us we begin to feel uneasy. Like we know something is lacking, and we wonder if we are failing. We question ourselves, and our decisions, but worst of all, we grow discontent with the good that we do have.
Unfortunately, we are so feeling so “hurt” at the moment that we fail to really notice how sour our mood is turning. We don’t usually see how we become that unpleasant person that no one wants to hang out with because all we are showing and sharing with the world is our bitterness.
He Knows
Just the fact that this is part of the Ten Commandments confirms who we usually feel so horrible when comparing our lot with someone else. We shouldn’t! If we keep our eyes open to what our neighbor is doing, then we lose sight of Him. We lose our focus and that is never a good thing.
Lord knows that our attention spans are not that great, which is why everything we want in this life we have to focus on order to get it. What we know is that everyday will be a trial. We will have these feelings and we have to work through them.
Our Prayer
Dear Lord,
Everything that you wish will be done. We love you Lord for you are forgiving, and understanding. We ask that you come into our hearts and keep them pure. We ask that you help us focus on YOU at all times, so that we never loose sight to what is important, and who we should be focused on at all times.
Amen.
Google+
You know I use to be envious of people when I was in my mid 20’s I would think why does this person have this and why can’t I get it. I don’t know but when I turned 30 I think it hit me that I have to follow my own path and do my own thing because that same person who may have the nice car or house may have cancer it’s never always pretty from what others see and no one is perfect. Great post.
There is something to say about age and wisdom, and I think being in my 30s (like you) everything just clicked! I also used to be envious of others around me, always asking why do they have something that I am currently lacking. After a while, I felt that it just got old, and learned that we are much happier with the things that we already have. We never really need more we just want more.
Hi Kalley
Very interesting post. This used to happen to me many years ago but I am grateful even to this day that I was delivered from the spirit of envy. There is a familiar saying “don’t envy others for what they have because one never know how s/he came by it.” And that is very true. A very encouraging prayer as well.
Thank you so much Yvonne. It takes time to pray and get right with our spirit to know that envy is only destructive to our faith and well being. It’s so true, we don’t know how others came about their possessions.
Perhaps it’s a form of envy, but I find my oldest son sometimes glorifies his friends that have more than him. I need to slap the Word on that situation. Thanks for bringing up this topic.
You’re very welcome. In a way, that could be a form of envy. especially if he’s equating self worth with possessions. I will keep you and your family in my prayers.
The monster of envy used to eat me up when I was younger but as I have gotten older I have realized that the grass is the greenest (for me) where I am standing at the moment.
Thank You for sharing this.
You’re very welcome Patrick. You are so right, our (own) grass is green and we should be enjoying it, instead of looking over in someone else’s yard. 🙂