Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore them, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for the doing the creative best you have with your own life.

(Gal 6.1-5; Message)

One of the Pharisee scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show [Jesus] up: “Teacher, which command in God’s law is the most important?”

Jesus said, “’Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s law and the Prophets hangs from them”

(Matt 22.35-40; Message)

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what does God for you is the best thing you can do for him…..we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around… So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvellously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

(Rom 12.1,4-6; Message)

“Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others.”

I suspect that I may not be the only person on the planet for whom the latter of these two commands from Paul is much harder than the former! There is no reason why I should find myself continually falling into the comparison trap, yet it is my daily experience and a chronic problem. I see the self-possession of others who quietly accept themselves as God has made (and is making) them, and wonder at their peace and steadiness. If this is something which you enjoy, give thanks and rejoice greatly at the gift and pray for those around you for whom it is not the case! I think of the blinkers which horses often wear to keep them from distraction and focussed on the way ahead – what I want are spiritual blinkers, to keep me looking at my Father, and not at myself or those around me.

All of our lives as believers seems to consist of living as well as we can for our Father in the particular circumstances which He has appointed for us. For each one, it will be different, and no two people will share the same physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual journeys. Our responsibility is to our Father first and foremost, and it is from His faithful love, his adoption of us as his children, that we gain our security, purpose, identity and hope. We need to trust that what He plans and is working in us is enough; each one is uniquely precious, for their own sakes, as his child.

Perhaps this is something we can lovingly do for one another as believers, as members of one body – celebrate the uniqueness of our fellow pilgrims to help them rest in God’s plan and shaping of them, even when it is not looking very impressive! We need grace to accept that others may have gifts we admire and lack ourselves. We also need grace to accept that others may admire our own gifts, and to keep giving God the praise for the ways that he provides for and enables His church to flourish.

Jesus commanded us to love others as we love ourselves – to clothe, feed, honour, comfort and speak God’s love and truth to others, as we do to ourselves. I believe that helping one another to see and be glad of our uniqueness is a great way to love-in-action, to countering the comparison trap, and nurturing a proper pride in our God, who has loved each one and is transforming each one according to his good purposes.

Heavenly Father, help us, your children, to see with your eyes as we look at one another. Help us to take our worth from your love, your plans for us, your secure grasp of us. Help us to recognise the glory of your children which is being revealed as we grow in faith and Christ-likeness.

Deliver us from the comparison trap, that we might love without envy or pride in ourselves, and might serve you free from those bonds of dissatisfaction and arrogance. Let us love one another, as Christ loves us, in practical service and faithful presence, accepting one another in his name and for the building up of your kingdom in this world. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.