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Envy and Restlessness
Posted By Big Kahuna On Sunday, April 27, 2008 @ 23:13 In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Why is it I am never satisfied? If I lived in a vacuum apart from other people and things maybe I could pull off satisfaction, but as it is, I see other people who have something I want or something I think I lack, and envy creeps into my life and re-orients it entirely. The new orientation of my thoughts is to get whatever that thing is, however I can get it. It orients both my actions and my prayers towards that aim. If I were honest with you, I could probably name a dozen things I would like to have right now, I could make a wish list like a kid at Christmas and make the case why all of them were important to my ministry.Augustine said centuries ago, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” Has anything changed about human nature since he said that? My heart longs for rest, but not as much as it longs for stuff most of the time. It doesn’t have to be material stuff either, it can even be spiritual or psychological stuff, it can even be stuff for my kids like success in what they are doing, solid friends, trust from others… Rest is hard to come by because of my restless heart.I don’t generally begrudge others having the things I want, at least not at the level Cain did. I don’t have a problem with them having it, I just want it too. Right now in my life I am more or less satisfied on my own behalf so I want for others. It bugs me that people who love God and desire to serve Him suffer financially and so my prayers are filled with requests on their behalf. Is there any hope of true rest in this world? From Genesis 3 on, we have been people who want that one other thing we think will satisfy us.
1 Comment To "Envy and Restlessness"
#1 Comment By rchovey On Thursday, May 1, 2008 @ Thursday, May 1, 2008
I feel this restlessness and dis-ease of which you speak. I live with it. I no longer long for material “stuff”, but for important “stuff”, inner “stuff”, spiritual “stuff”, life-changing “stuff”, intangible “stuff”. I learned long ago that material stuff can be replaced, having lived through loss of everything I “owned” a couple of times. Once in a house fire on my 21st birthday. I had 4 babies ages 4yrs and younger. There was nothing left. Not even shoes for their feet. I got past that. Then again in the mid 80’s, when I left everything I owned in a storage unit in Florida and went back to WV in an effort to keep my family together. Never got the money to go get my “stuff”. Believe me, there’s stuff everywhere you go. Maybe not good stuff, maybe not the stuff you want, but you can find stuff and get by. I ache for my children. I wish I had done things differently but I had no idea how to parent! Now that I think I have it figured out, it’s too late. How do you forgive yourself when the results of your actions are ever before you? I want them to be happy, healthy, and in love with Christ. It grieves me continuously that my children are not the adults I had hoped they would be. And I will admit that I feel a twinge of jealousy when I hear others brag about the accomplishments of their adult children. Then I feel the guilt because I wasn’t the parent those children deserved. Is there any hope of true rest in this world? I think not. If we found true rest in this world would it not mean we were content in this world? And since we are not of this world we can never be content in it.
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