For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3:23

I look around and find myself comparing myself to nearly everyone in some capacity or another.

Depending on the day, I’ll either hide behind self-pity and look to honorable men who I consider better than me. Or I’ll bolster up myself behind a wall of pride and look down on those who I pity or despise.

Looking up or looking down at my fellow man and woman. Not taking into account the chasm between their circumstance and my own—the years that brought them to where they are and me to where I am.

It’s an exercise in ignorance.

I either end up feeling like crap—discouraged that I’m not farther along in my life, in my spiritual journey…that I shouldn’t have succumbed to addiction. Or, I am ballooned by a gaseous arrogance that will be short lived if I’m lucky—the come down of which will plop me right back in self-pity—or worse still, if it persists, I may wind up believing the lie that I am better off and somehow more significant than others.

Why is it so difficult to be one among many?

Par is not even ok. It is good. It keeps me right sized. It settles me in the soil of spiritual growth. It gives me a chance.

So, when the temptation comes to fiddle around with comparison, meet it with reality. The differences in circumstance are impossible to qualify, and any attempt to do so makes a pretty terrible claim.

It’s the dangerous claim that I am my own god, and it has become in vogue: in disguise as individuality.

God, remind me that I’m not you.