Religion in Daily Life

By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.

http://www.allsaintstorresdale.org

A watchmaker opened a shop in a small village. Eighty percent of the men who lived in this village worked at the local mill. One day the watchmaker noticed a man who stopped daily, took out his pocket watch, compared it to the clock in the window, and adjusted the watch. The watchmaker went out and spoke to the man. The watchmaker asked, “What do you do for a living?” The man explained he was the foreman at the mill. His job was to blow the whistle at lunch time. The watchmaker smiled and said, “I’ve been setting the clock in the window according to your whistle.” Each man was comparing his clock time to the other.

How often do we look at other people and compare ourselves to them! When Jesus of Nazareth returned to life after he was executed, he had a talk with his follower Peter, who had let him down when Jesus had been arrested. Jesus gave Peter back his work as a “shepherd,” a pastor to people in the Jesus Movement. Apparently, Peter wanted to compare his work to that of another follower. “Peter turned and saw that the follower Jesus loved was walking behind them . . . . When Peter saw him behind them, he asked Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to live until I come back, that is not your business. You follow me'” John 21:20, 21 NCV).

The Apostle Paul also saw people comparing themselves to others. In a letter to Jesus’ followers in the Greek city of Corinth, Paul wrote about people with swelled heads: “Their trouble is that they are only comparing themselves with each other and measuring themselves against their own little ideas. What stupidity!” (2 Corinthians 10:12, LB). Likewise, Paul felt compelled to write to Jesus’ followers in Galatia: “Do your own work well, and then you will have something to be proud of. But don’t compare yourself with others” (Galatians 6:4 CEV).

Years ago, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale suggested humorously that we should change our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo. He said that the eagle flies alone. It is an individualist. The buffalo, in contrast, was never alone. It ran in a herd with other buffaloes against which it could compare itself. The buffaloes are gone; the eagles remain. In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.”

You are Worthy

Do not undermine your worth

by comparing yourself with others.

It is because we are different

that each of us is special.

Do not set your goals

by what other people deem important.

Only you know

what is best for you.

Do not take for granted

the things closest to your heart.

Cling to them as you would your life,

for without them,

life is meaningless.

Do not let your life

slip through your fingers

by living in the past

nor for the future.

By living your life one day at a time,

you live all the days of your life.

Do not give up

when you still have something to give.

Nothing is really over

until the moment you stop trying.