God's Favorite.

"Obsessing on an unmet desire also takes away our joy and delight in all that God has provided for us today"  Lydia Brownbeck Contentment: A Godly Woman's Adornment .


My note to this quote is seeking joy and delight will bring more joy and delight.

I have a couple of friends that discuss on an almost daily basis being God's favorite.  One or the other of them will name a blessing and declare themselves to be God's favorite because of said blessing.  Which of course will prompt the other to do the same thing.  It becomes a contest of sorts at times.  Now before you get the wrong idea the competition part is totally done in love, friendship and jest.  There are absolutely no hard feelings between the two at all.  I know this because I know these two women pretty well.  That being said, I have a confession to make because they both will probably read this at some point in time.

My confession: I have been jealous of them.

Jealous, that is a horrid word, and an even more horrid feeling, at least to me,  which makes the confession that much harder to make.  But it is true.

What exactly have I been jealous of, what have I wanted that they had?  Being God's favorite,  the blessings the received, their friendship.  Not any of those.  Nope it was the joy they had in discussing these things.  Because really the blessings they discuss are not huge miraculous things.  They are little every day types of blessings. Things that a lot of people take for granted, or wouldn't garner much notice in many lives. But to these two ladies they do, often.

What makes these things so special?  Each of these friends have had some pretty nasty stuff dealt to them in recent years. And through it each of them have come to realize that the little things do matter, and they proclaim it loudly.  They each seek out things for which they are grateful and make it a point to point these things out.  So much so that they have made it a game.

But I was jealous,  and that jealousy pointed out a glaring error in my own life.  Not that I didn't receive blessings.  I do, every.single.day. No, the error in my life was concentrating on the fact that I didn't have the joy that they did.  I was obsessing on an unmet desire, the desire for more joy, instead of delighting in what God was already giving me.  So for part of my daily concentration on contentment will be listing ways that show I am also God's favorite.

And for today I will say I am God's Favorite because I get to spend 2 days camping in this glorious fall weather with my children and my parents.  My only wish is that my husband could also join us, that would make it just about perfect.

And on that last note I will not have computer access the next two days, I will be writing so you will get those posts when I return to the computer :-)