What God thinks about Comparison
You may see the topic and think “has this become an agriculture blog?”, and I will tell you absolutely NOT, But, we could certainly learn a thing or two from plants.
In June my the church declared a mid-year prayer month, and so the whole month of June was dedicated to prayer and fasting. As soon as I was done with my first year of Uni I jumped at the opportunity to have more time to spend at church praying and joining in this prayer month. During one of those sessions, I started praying to reflect on the last 6 months of the year 2021, as anyone would do. I spoke to God about my progress thus far.
At the beginning of every year I get a word specifically for me, and this time around , I got GROWTH. And so I started saying the different ways I think I grew and thanking God for them but before I knew it , I started to compare myself with others and said, “ God I don’t really think I grew that much after all, I still haven’t done ABC that XYZ has managed and I still haven’t accomplished EFG”, we could finish the whole alphabet at this point. But before I could carry on in my comparison chronicles, the Holy Spirit told me to keep quiet and started ministering to me.
Holy Spirit used two plants I had seen at a farm growing this year, and those were the Maize plant and Soybean plants. I had seen when both were planted and also seen the progress of their growth up until the time of their harvest. To make this a lot clear, the soybean plant , which makes things like soy milk, cooking oil and tofu grows up to about 22cm or 9inches for our American friends. On the contrary, the maize plant on average grows up to 2–3m or 8 feet. This is obviously a very large difference. And so, Holy spirit said we could never look at the soybean plant at its point of harvest and say it has failed to grow simply because it didn’t reach the same height as the maize plant because what truly determines growth is that the fruits or soybean pods, in this case, have been produced.
Wow, I had to let that soak in for a moment. So often than not we do compare our growth with others and measure our success or lack thereof based on others when that truly isn’t how God would want it. Your growth in life can never be measured to the next person, not even your identical twin if you have one. Why? because God has made all of us so different and unique, the struggles and challenges you have had to overcome shape and mold you to be the person you are, and those no matter how similar to another can never be the same. The conditions for your growth are not the same as the next person, how then can we even dare to compare?.
Let’s just say God has made us into a world with billions of different plants, some are very tall, others are short and others may be broad, in it all they could never be compared because what truly determines growth is the fruit that the plant is able to provide when it is ripe.
But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. — Matthew 13:23
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. — Luke 6:43–45
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. — Galatians 5:22–23
Stay Blessed always!