Transcript
So there's a third trap. It's the trap of envy, it's that tendency to look over the fence, to look at somebody else's life, to assess that their life is better than your life, and to wish that you could have their life now. Again, all of these temptations make sense when you're suffering. Doubt makes sense when you're suffering. Worry makes sense when you're suffering. Envy makes sense. It's not wrong to question. It's not wrong to wonder. It's not wrong to think about what may happen next. It's not wrong to wish that life were better or different.
Do Not Let Envy Rule Your Heart
What's wrong is to let those things rule your heart, because if worry rules you, if doubt rules you, if envy rules you, it lessens your capacity to make the good decisions that you need to make out of a heart at rest that will allow you to move on. Listen, physical, physical sickness cannot take life from you. A loss of a job does not have the power to take life from you. Rejection in a relationship does not have the power to take life from you. Those are hard and difficult things to deal with, but if life is taken from you, perhaps you've done that to you.
You've given way to worry, you've given way to doubt, you've given way to envy, and it feels like life has ended or is unlivably hard. That's what these traps do. And so, if you're going, if you're in suffering, you can't be passive. You have to fight the temptations that are resident in suffering. Every sufferer is a person under temptation. You're never just suffering the thing. You're suffering the battle with temptations that can harm you and make you feel like you're forsaken, and that the good things that are available to other people are not available to you.
Suffering doesn't mean you're forsaken. Suffering means you're suffering. Your savior is still there. He meets you in the darkness, and he will be for you what no one else can be in him. You find the strength that you need in him. You find the wisdom that you need in him, you find the healing that can't be found any other way.
