Another wonderful side affect of the moisture we have been receiving is that Lubbock is turning green! Our typically brown crunchy west Texas grass is becoming luscious and green! Yay!
It is a whole new world, in fact sometimes, I can scarcely believe that we still really live in this normally dry town. One day while in my back yard, I took this picture:
My yard is full of green grass! Or so it seems. I just wanted to get a great view of the beautiful greenery that we now had in our back yard. I wasn't trying to be particularly misleading, but after I took that picture from that vantage point, I took this one:
Sometimes the grass just isn't as green as you thought, now is it? Sorry, I had to! At the time when I took those two pictures, I just thought it was funny. But as with so many times before in my life, God saw it as a teachable moment. I could fool anyone with the first picture if I presented it by itself. If I had left out all of the dog poop and brown mud, no one would have been the wiser! And in life, we have a lot of full grass/ tiny patch of grass moments. Times where we look at someone, and say, they are doing so much better than I am! When in reality, that's not the case. We will work ourselves all up because of our perception of other people. We I love to compare ourselves to others, often often putting ourselves down because of nothing but a tiny green patch in the middle of a big mud pit.
This method of comparing and despairing does a few key things, though. And I think it's worth it to take a look.
1) It gets us judging others.
If we allow ourselves to look at others and constantly compare them to ourselves, there are two things that happen. Either you come out on top, or the person you're comparing yourself to becomes the winner. It is a loose loose situation, though, because either your perception of yourself is lowered, or you end up judging the other person. The first scenario where we feel worse about ourselves is negative because that means that we are not basing our worth in who God says we are. We are looking for self affirmation though the act of beating someone out in something that is important to us.
In the second scenario in which we win, the tragedy there is that we are boosting our pride. A little tidbit about pride, the Bible says in James 4:6, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble". Becoming proud makes it so that God cannot use us, and putting others down in our mind is one of the fastest ways to obey our flesh and grow our pride. Also, pride in yourself will always fail you eventually. We are not perfect, so placing so much value on ourselves is a great way to make sure you'll be let down in the near future.
2) Comparing ourselves to others dehumanizes those around us.
When we compare ourselves to the women who just walked in the room, she ceases to be God's beloved and becomes an object to us. She becomes an obstacle to overcome; a speed bump in our way towards a better self-esteem. Often, after feeling threatened by someone else's supposed superiority, we start to view them and act towards them with hostility. We objectify them. Then our insecurity kicks in, and before you know it they have become our enemy because they are an obstacle that will not move. This process squashes our love. How can we act toward someone lovingly if secretly inside, we have dehumanized them? It is not how God intended for us to interact, and it only leads to hurt. If we stop comparing, we open up our ability to love.
3) We discount the beauty of our personal relationship with God.
No, we are not all in the same place. Things that seem simple for everyone else are still a struggle for some of us, and that's okay! In fact, that is great, because we are all different. We all learn in different ways. We connect with God in unique ways, and sometimes when we compare ourselves to others, I can just feel Him saying, "Don't you love our relationship? Why are you coveting their relationship with me and where they are when our relationship is so beautiful? I made you to be different because I like those differences!"
Our journey with God is exciting and awesome in part because God comes to visit with us one on one. Our relationship with God isn't a speaker-audience type relationship. Rather, He is there with us throughout our day, listening and caring about the things that matter to us. He wants to be our best friend, and when we look at what others have, I wonder if that doesn't come across as a little sad to our Heavenly Father.
4) Our eyes move off of God and onto ourselves.
Possibly the worst outcome of all is the fact that when we concentrate on ourselves and others, we are no longer concentrating on God. The only way that we can overcome insecurities and feelings of inferiority is to focus on God and let ourselves be changed by Him. When we stop worrying about how we stack up against others and simply sit at the feet of Jesus, we can find fulfillment and learn that who we really are is unshakable. When we focus on God, no amount of people doing better around us can ever shake who we really are in Christ.
I have to renew my mind and keep this in the forefront of my thoughts daily. I mean, Martha was right! There probably was a lot to get done. There will always be someone better than you, no matter what category you choose! There will always be things pulling at you to get up and walk away from Jesus feet. But if we follow the path that Mary took, we will realize that the one who really deserves our concentration and attention is not ourself or the others around us. The best seat in the house will always be right in front of our loving savior, Jesus.
Oh, and before I go, as you can see, I have made some changes to my blog. I decided that I wanted to spruce 'er up a little bit! I also added a gadget to my home page that will allow you to sign up for my blogs by email! I will be posting on every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday! If you enjoyed your read, please consider sharing on Facebook or Twitter.
Happy Friday!
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