Green-Eyed Calico
Last night I did my absolute most favorite thing to do on a Friday night after a long, hard week of work. I stayed home and watched T.V. Maybe it’s a sign of getting older, but more and more I really treasure that crash time.
While I was propped up in the easy chair just enjoying the fact that I wasn’t trying to accomplish a single thing, my cat jumped in my lap. Then my other cat jumped in my lap. Soon the cats were edging closer and closer to my head, each trying to be sure that she was the getting most of the attention and affection, until finally Callie was actually sitting on my face. Simple jealousy, through and through.
There is this game people play with babies in which they torture the poor dears by hugging all over their mothers. You know what happens when you hug on a baby’s mother. He becomes very agitated and does everything he can to get to his mother himself. She is his, and he just can’t take the chance of anybody else taking away some of that love and attention that belongs only to him.
It amuses us to see this in babies and pets. It’s so basic to our nature that we really adore seeing it in its most innocent form.
Yet it is also something that all of the world’s religions warn against. We know that, but somehow we also know that jealousy is more complicated than anything a mere warning can address.
1 Corinthians says love is not jealous, but Exodus says that even God is jealous, and since 1 John says “God is love,” what are we to make of that?
Then there are those places where we are told to try to make people jealous of our relationship with God. Or at least that’s the way the Bible is often interpreted in the context of living life as a testimony. “This little light of mine,” they taught us to sing at VBS, harking back to Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, who is in heaven.”
We’re taught that if we shine for God others are going to see our lights and want some of that for themselves, and this is a good thing. It means we’re being good witnesses.
Oh, but if you’ve never been to a 75% off sale at Betty Ann’s and had the sweater you were about to try on snatched right out of your hands, you’ve never lived. For all of the good bonding and inspirational experiences jealously in its more innocent form can provide, it can show its dark underbelly quicker than almost any other human trait. It’s not called a deadly sin for nothing. Jealousy has great power to destroy relationships, jobs, families, nations, reputations, and on and on.
And it always starts out so innocently. We’re just born with it. Even animal babies are born with it.
Adorable in babies and atrocious in adults.
Those are always the toughest vices to avoid, aren’t they?
While I was propped up in the easy chair just enjoying the fact that I wasn’t trying to accomplish a single thing, my cat jumped in my lap. Then my other cat jumped in my lap. Soon the cats were edging closer and closer to my head, each trying to be sure that she was the getting most of the attention and affection, until finally Callie was actually sitting on my face. Simple jealousy, through and through.
There is this game people play with babies in which they torture the poor dears by hugging all over their mothers. You know what happens when you hug on a baby’s mother. He becomes very agitated and does everything he can to get to his mother himself. She is his, and he just can’t take the chance of anybody else taking away some of that love and attention that belongs only to him.
It amuses us to see this in babies and pets. It’s so basic to our nature that we really adore seeing it in its most innocent form.
Yet it is also something that all of the world’s religions warn against. We know that, but somehow we also know that jealousy is more complicated than anything a mere warning can address.
1 Corinthians says love is not jealous, but Exodus says that even God is jealous, and since 1 John says “God is love,” what are we to make of that?
Then there are those places where we are told to try to make people jealous of our relationship with God. Or at least that’s the way the Bible is often interpreted in the context of living life as a testimony. “This little light of mine,” they taught us to sing at VBS, harking back to Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, who is in heaven.”
We’re taught that if we shine for God others are going to see our lights and want some of that for themselves, and this is a good thing. It means we’re being good witnesses.
Oh, but if you’ve never been to a 75% off sale at Betty Ann’s and had the sweater you were about to try on snatched right out of your hands, you’ve never lived. For all of the good bonding and inspirational experiences jealously in its more innocent form can provide, it can show its dark underbelly quicker than almost any other human trait. It’s not called a deadly sin for nothing. Jealousy has great power to destroy relationships, jobs, families, nations, reputations, and on and on.
And it always starts out so innocently. We’re just born with it. Even animal babies are born with it.
Adorable in babies and atrocious in adults.
Those are always the toughest vices to avoid, aren’t they?
posted by Sharon Gerald | 1:41 PM
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