Wanting What They Have
“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” Proverbs 14:30
Somehow it always seems like everyone else has what you don’t have - the trendiest clothes, the nicer car, the newest iPhone, the cute boyfriend… it just doesn’t seem fair sometimes.
I remember begging my mom for a pair of Ugg boots in seventh grade (are those even still a thing?) because every other girl at school was wearing them. “I just HAVE to have them Mom!” I pleaded to her. But did I really HAVE to have them? No. I had plenty of pairs of shoes in my closet. I wanted them so badly because I was jealous of the other girls who wore them. I wanted to fit in.
The little green monster of envy manages to creep his way into all of our hearts (more often than we’d probably like to admit), and we can’t stop thinking about how much better our lives would be if we just had the _______ that so-and-so has (and trust me, it doesn’t go away as you get older).
But stop and think about what you feel like when you are jealous of someone else – personally, when I feel jealous, it makes me feel pretty yucky inside.
Envy, as Proverbs tells us, “rots the bones” – it brings along a whole batch of bad emotions, like bitterness, loneliness, and even anger. But God wants to protect us from feeling these kinds of feelings. He even includes it in the Ten Commandments when he warns us against “coveting” what belongs to our neighbor.
When we become jealous, it poisons our hearts from the inside. On the other hand, when we spend time thanking God for all the incredible blessings that he has given us, our hearts are filled with peace.
Spend some time today thinking about what gifts God has blessed you with, and see how much less you start to care about those little things that you don’t have.