No Comparison!

Comparison shopping is one of my favorite indoor sports.  Trying to find the very best deal possible is something many women enjoy.  Unfortunately, the skills of evaluation and assessment that make us great bargain hunters can also make us miserable when we begin to apply them to ourselves and those around us.  From the time we are big enough to step outside our own front doors, we begin to be aware of the differences between ourselves and the kids next door.  She has streamers on her handlebars and a basket with a flower!  I’m still riding a hand-me-down tricycle.  Sniff.  And so it goes all through life.  We compare our appearance, our intelligence, our possessions, our skills, even our personalities, and most of the time we decide that we are the ones who are lacking.  Church isn’t even a safe zone.  It is so easy to begin comparing our Christian walk with someone else’s and feel that we don’t have what they have.  What I hear the Lord saying to all of this today is simply “No Comparison”.  I believe He wants us to know that He never intended us to look at each other or ourselves in this way.  He wants us to know that we are accepted “in the Beloved.”  In Christ, we are all completely received by the Father and for the same reason – the covering of our sin by the blood of Jesus.  All the rest of it – how we look, how we act, what we have, what we don’t have – it just really isn’t that important.  If we can look at ourselves and say, “You are accepted by the Father”, then we can look at everyone else around us and say the same thing.  All those differences just don’t have to matter so much once we know, really know, that we belong to Him.  He is our Daddy God and He delights in our differences because He designed us that way.  He loves variety and while we may value one set of characteristics over another, who says He does?  He seems to enjoy people in all shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors.  If you haven’t noticed this, you probably haven’t been to Six Flags lately.  Bottom line, it’s time to keep the comparisons where they belong – on the produce aisle.  Go pick out the best watermelon or the juiciest peach, and give yourself freedom to be the best at one thing – being the person you were created to be. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,  just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,  having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,  to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.  Ephesians 1:3-6