If I were to ask you if you’d prefer toil or tranquility, you’d most definitely choose the latter. One is exhausting physical labor and the other is a state of calmness.
As I travel on through my notes from the last conference I attended, the subject of comparison rears its head. Comparison is something we strongly attempt to avoid, but almost as if it’s second nature, we find ourselves stuck in it’s trap time and time again. Why?
As Jeremy Foster would say, we’re turning to the wrong source. He said there are four areas of possible discontentment that come from comparing ourselves to others:
1. Material & Financial
2. Relational
3. Circumstantial
4. Personal
He went on to say, we should be stacking ourselves up against God’s Word.
6 Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.
Ecclesiastes 4:6, ESV
Delight in the way you were created and the place God has called you to. Celebrate the calm that contentment brings. The alternative is chasing after the image of others which is as much a waste of time as chasing the wind would be. You’ll never catch it. You’ll live in toil and never be satisfied.