"Comparison is the Thief of Joy"

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you...” 1 Thessalonians 4:11 (NIV) Paul’s instructions are contrary to the push of our society. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” seems like an oxymoron! Ambition and a quiet life don't seem to go together. Society encourages people to have “ambition,” and lots of it. There is little encouragement “to lead a quiet life.” Someone with an ambition to lead a quiet life could be judged a failure. The messages we hear loudest and most often are: Make it your ambition to be famous, rich, powerful, and happy. Make it your ambition to be educated, and better than everyone else. Make it your ambition to be skinny, beautiful, fit, or strong. “Mind your own business” is also contrary to the common practice of most. Society’s expectation is that people “be in the know”. Stick your nose into other people’s business. Make sure you know what they’re up to. Pursuing the ambitions of our current culture creates a life of comparison. But comparison is almost always detrimental to a person’s mental and emotional health. Max Ehrmann cautioned against comparison when he wrote: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” President Teddy Roosevelt observed that “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Teddy Roosevelt and Jon Tyson determined that “Comparison is the root of most of the misery we feel in life.” Comparison dissolves when Jesus’ followers obey Paul’s directive to make it their ambition to “lead a quiet life” and to “mind their own business.” (I guess people would still find a way to compare who had a quieter life and that would spoil the ambition!) Don’t compare yourself to others. It is detrimental to your mental and emotional health. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, mind your own business and work with your hands.” God smiles at people whose ambition is to live a quiet life, mind their own business, and do what they’re given to do. Make this kind of life your ambition.