Is it wrong to be envious? We are told to put it aside. We are told there are things we shouldn’t envy. It is something that we all deal with. Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune, stirred by “those who have what we ought to have.”
I have to admit I am envious of people that are generous. I am by nature not one of those people. I see someone that so easily gives and I wish I could be that person. I have tried. It hurts. I will keep trying till it is easy but it never will be. Yet we must be generous. We must care for others. We must give of ourselves. I will continue to do so as I grow spiritually, and God will keep using it to help me grow.
Why are we supposed to be generous? Quite simply, we are made in the image of a generous God who has modeled it and if we are to be like Him we too then must be generous. God is so generous. In so many ways. The most striking form of generosity to me though is how willingly God gives His grace. We don’t deserve it, have done nothing to earn it and yet He gives it.
In Joshua 24 the Israelites are reminded of God’s grace. Verse 13 says that God gave them “a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”
The Israelites had been a people that had come from nothing, deserved nothing and had nothing. Yet God gave them an abundance. Why? Because His grace abounds, and He gives it mightily because He can.
The story of the Israelites is our story. We are a people from nothing, deserving of nothing and yet God has given us everything. There wasn’t anything He wasn’t willing to give including Himself, and He gave it to us freely for us to accept. Blows me away every time. This week be reminded of the overflowing abundant grace that God has given us just because He can!