Vanity

Do you sometimes wake-up with vexation? You sense this fowl mood swirling and growling quietly inside you like a rising tornado. The hairs on your skin suddenly rise with prickly irritation. Everyone and everything becomes a victim of your wrath. And woe betide the human that tries to pacify you.

All hell is suddenly let lose. And the outburst of your fury sets everything in sight ablaze. You watch with abandon as the ones you love go up in flames, they burn with the fire of your rage. You are unhappy. You feel cheated. Dissatisfied. Nothing is enough. You feel life has cheated you out of something precious.

But it was you who just got promoted. It is the same you who your friends keep applauding; asking you how you do it. The same you with the wife sent from heaven. The perfect husband everyone is envious of. The same you with a child or more. It was this same you who recently checked off a list of all the dreams that had come true.

How then is it that you feel dissatisfied? What is missing? What are you fighting so hard to lay grasp of? What is the problem? How has life cheated you out of something precious?

The one who put you here on earth, requires very little from you. He gave you one talent, maybe three. Some have five. His concern is that you return with a profit. Good profit. Everything else is added. Everything else is there to assist you in making that good profit.

When these talents are lost, misused, unused or suppressed, turmoil sets in. Misplaced priorities will always invoke a voracious ejection of unabated want. So like that dormant volcano that suddenly erupts, consuming all and everything around it including itself, you too will soon witness the fire of your fury lick up your loved ones including yourself.

Vanity is a merciless disease. And it’s only cure would be the pursuit of purpose. There will always arise, the urge to take on more than we can chew, so the next time you wake-up with that fowl mood, remember to banish it with this silent prayer — “I am thankful for my life and thankful for this day. And everything I cannot control I submit it by faith unto God Almighty.”

Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. – NLT