envy

I’ve been dealing with envy recently. I know, I know... it’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s just that I’ve been really wishing I could be Jesus or Robin Hood. I have this mad passion to make the world a better place. But I’m completely incapable of making the difference I want to make because I’m just a girl with no superpowers or super resources. I just have a super heart.

I would want to be Jesus because He actually CAN save the whole world. His heart and His ability match.


I would want to be Robin Hood so that I could redistribute the wealth of the world. I don’t see how some people refuse to downsize their standard of living when there are millions of people who need clean drinking water, food, basic medicine and education.

Now I’ve been addicted to many things before. And I’m not taking about chocolate or a good tv show. I’m talking about those things that you need to take great measures to ensure you have them when you need them. Great measures like stealing, lying, cheating, lowering your moral standards in order to have these things. At one time in my life, I had enough motivation to break a few rules, to go without other luxuries in order to get my fix. I learned how to behave in order to not get caught and have the ‘things’ taken away from me. What I’m saying is that I acquired some serious skills in order to feed my addiction what it ‘needed.’

I thank God that He gave me the strength and motivation to starve that addiction, and I no longer feel driven by it. And sure, when I’m stressed and weak, I get tempted to return to those things, but with the help of God, I now can resist them.

What I learned is that I have it within me, and even more so now with the power and guidance of God, to achieve what I want to achieve. So I should be able to raise enough money to drill for wells of clean water in Africa if I feel it is important enough, as important to me as it surely is to the people who need it.

What is so frustrating is that I live over here, safe within a country without these immediate, life-threatening needs. I don’t live with the same desperation that these people are being forced to live with because people like me get distracted by the twisted, counter-productive desires that our hearts are fed by the culture and the marketplace. I get these catalogs and magazines delivered to my house filled with colorful, shiny pages of beautiful living rooms and fantastic gardens that I would love to recreate for my family and friends to enjoy. I could easily see myself investing much time and energy and money into making my family’s life more comfortable and easy.

But is that my purpose? As a wife and mother, I feel it is my duty to care for my family as best I can. So on one hand, yes, having a clean, nice home is one of the many responsibilities I feel God has given me. But on the other hand, I see these areas of the world just dying away and turning to violence in desperation because the wealth of the world is not evenly distributed. Am I a part of the problem or a part of the solution? Can I fairly and effectively live in balance? And what in the world does that look like?