She looked stiffly over at the woman walking through the door. Her eyebrow went up as a sarcastic thought shot into her mind, "Another cute dress!" Chewing on that thought a little more she said to herself, "She must spend a lot of money on clothes and she must wear a new outfit every Sunday and here I wear the same old things. I wish I had more money to buy more fashionable clothes. Why does she get all the good stuff?" The next thing you know she is avoiding the woman with the nice clothes. Does the green-eyed monster of jealousy ever creep into your life? It may not be a situation about clothes, maybe it's an opportunity that someone else has and you don't. If we are honest we have to say we all struggle with the sin of jealousy or envy. So what is the underlying assumption that we are making when we have thoughts like the one above? Well, one is we are assuming that we deserve more than we have. Another assumption is that we have worked harder than others so we should get more than they do.
In Jerry Bridges' book Transforming Grace, he uses Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) as an illustration of God's grace to the believers. He first says that the parable should be called "The Generous Landowner" for the emphasis is on the generosity of the one who hired the workers and paid them all the same no matter at what hour they began. Bridges says that the parable focuses on the workers who were hired at the eleventh hour. "They were treated extrememely generously, each one receiving twelve times what he had earned on a strict hourly basis. He hired them not because of his need, but because of their need. He represents God in His gracious awareness of our needs and His continuous work to meet them."
If we keep in mind the generosity of our heavenly Father and all He's done for us this should characterize our living and thinking. But we are like the workers who had worked all day in the vineyard. When they started comparing what they received with what the other workers received then the green-eyed monster crept in. They weren't appreciative of the fact that the landowner hired them at all. He didn't have to, but that was his nature to give to those in need. Oftentimes that's what happens with us; we stop focusing on the awesome character of our Lord and His graciousness to us, and our brothers & sisters in the Lord, and we slip into that legalistic, worldly mindset of: "I did this and now you owe me that!" Or "she doesn't deserve to get that, but I do!" When we stop to think about God and His gracious character we realize that He has given us much more than we deserve; He gives when we are full of our selves...when all our righteous deeds are filthy rags...when we have nothing to give.....
"O, beware of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Shakespeare
