How Do You Measure Up?

+JMJ+

Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary 

How does your life measure up to the lives of others? In the race to have the biggest yet thinnest television set on the block for Sunday football, are you leading? Do you have the most expensive car on the street? Are you living in the biggest house in the neighborhood? Is your boat the newest at the marina? Is your spouse in better physical shape than your co-worker's? Are your kids top of their class? Is your relationship with your spouse better than your romantic neighbor's?

We are constantly bombarded with these questions about how we measure up to others in society. We can so easily be distracted by a desire to be on top of everything! This desire stems from our human narcissism which we have thanks to good old Adam and Eve. (if you know what I mean) The real question we should ask ourselves is how are we living comparatively to  the way God wants us to live.

We are not meant to compare ourselves to other people. If we do that, we can be lead astray from the path which God has personally designed for us. But what does that have to do with coveting your neighbors goods and/or wife?

What your neighbor has, according to Christ, comes with a responsibility. That responsibility is to do God's will with it. Naturally, that gets more and more difficult with the more that you have because the more you have, the less likely you are to give ALL of it away. Now, we know that that does not mean give everything you have to charity, it means that you should use everything you have FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD, by using it to care for physically, mentally, and emotionally, the people of God on earth for "whatever ye shall do to the least of these my brethren ye shall have done it unto me."

Think about it the next time you turn green with envy at the sight of someone else's new iPhone or anything else. Rather than dwelling on how you'd like to have that, perhaps you should assess how you're using what you currently have to serve our Lord.