Tuesday: Jealousy Comes Out in Physical Symptoms
WEEK 35
TUESDAY
JEALOUSY COMES OUT IN PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS
Luke 19:37-40
We saw yesterday how hidden jealousy breaks out in symptoms quite different from the disease. A little boy developed deafness when a new baby arrived. His mother, a wise woman, saw what was happening and gave the boy special attention and love, and the deafness disappeared.
What are we to do when we find jealousy eating at the heart of our happiness and our usefulness? Don’t fight it; that only drives it into the subconscious. Bring it up and out into the open and surrender it to God. This is how one very useful woman met her feeling of jealousy.
“Thank you for the sermon on surrendering our ‘word.’ My ‘word’ was jealousy, jealousy of a fellow worker. I gave it up when I started for the Ashram; and when I did, something happened with the fellow worker. When I returned, this woman, who irritated me with her superiority, came in and sat down across from me and said, ‘I wished for you yesterday. I was talking with one of the teachers who is having a struggle in his inner life and has many problems, and I felt you could help him solve them.’” Jealousy was gone out of her heart and out of her relationships.
After you have surrendered the jealousy, go one step further and keep saying all the nice things you can about the person you have been jealous of. And let all your thoughts of that person turn to prayer.
A man described how he and the other men who worked on commission in a store would criticize one another, especially if one sold more goods than another. That was self-defeating, for it made them all sell fewer goods; the customer would unconsciously sense the undertone of hostility in the place and buy less. Jealousy is a cancer, eating at our happiness and our effectiveness. So root it out of your thoughts before it gets a foothold. Once in, it becomes the spring of action and emotion. Consent for God to take it out, and cooperate in keeping it out.
O Jesus, give me the heart that knows love and only love for everybody. Help me to love those I do not like, and then I’ll probably like them. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: As love casts out all fear, so love will cast out all jealousy in me.