Feeling Better: Devotions From Time of GraceNäide

My Life: I've been cheated

As you know, when you begin a Monopoly game, everybody gets $1,500 in start-up cash. Everybody's bank account is the same. The score in every major league baseball game since Abner Doubleday's time is always 0-0 at the top of the first inning.

Alas, life is not like board games or sports. Different people have vastly different amounts of "start-up cash." Some are born to wealth. Some are born in happy, stable, loving homes. Some are naturally intelligent and breeze through school. Some are just naturally thin and cute. Many aren't.

Satan will see to it that you are acutely, intensely aware of all the things you don't have in your life. He will massage a spirit of resentment in your heart to feel cheated, that somehow you are expected to compete at Monopoly with a measly $637.50 in start-up cash. He wants you to brood over your acne, male-pattern baldness, and cellulite.

Here's how to get past those resentments. Take inventory of the treasures that you have been given. "Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love . . . for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things" (Psalm 107:8,9). Rejoice with me--the Lord is not done giving us good things!