Tuesday, 22 May 2012

No comparisons

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Psalm 139: 14

We all know we are unique; that there is and never has been anyone just like us. Everything about everybody is different even with identical twins. Even their fingerprints and DNA vary. There may be similarities between people but no two people are identical in any way. In itself that is truly amazing that of the approximately 7 billion people on the planet no two people are alike. We are unique yet unfortunately people rarely celebrate the differences between people but spend far more time comparing themselves to others. 
This leads us to wanting to be other than how God made us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made so wishing we looked like others or had other’s attributes is a bit of a rejection of God’s design. God made us and God loves us even though we are works in progress and far from perfect.

Comparisons are odious because they either puff up our pride if we feel the comparison is favourable to us or feed our rejection and unhappiness if others are perceived as better than us in some way. We are who we are. God loves and accepts us as we are so we must do the same.
If only we celebrated our differences we might come to an understanding that together using our different talents and abilities we can achieve so much more than we can alone. The body of Christ as Paul talks about it in I Corinthians 12 is all about recognising and using our differences.

When you are tempted to compare yourself to another whether favourably or not, stop, recognise and thank God for the differences between you. Infinite variety is God’s way and it should become our way too.
Be free to be yourself and accept yourself with all your good and not so good points. God does, so why not join him instead of making comparisons that he never wanted us to make.

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