Worst. Game. Ever.

You know the one.  I'm not talking about baseball or football or hockey.  Or about Monopoly or Clue or Angry Birds.  Or about a card game or a video game.

It's the game we all play.  The one we deny playing, but we play all the same.  We're all too familiar with this game.  And it's the worst.  Worst. Game. Ever.

The comparison game.  The game where we never quite measure up.  Where we're always feeling less than.

Less pretty.  Less talented.  Less intelligent.  Less useful.  Less.

It's a terrible game.  Because it's based on a false premise.

This comparison game we play is based on the premise that what I think someone else is thinking about me is actually what they're thinking.  And most of the time, maybe even all the time, what they are actually thinking is miles away from what I think they are thinking.

And what "they" think of me doesn't really matter so much anyway, does it?  Isn't what the Lord thinks of me what really matters.  That's what we tell ourselves we believe, and most of the time we probably do.  But then there are those times when that little voice inside our heads starts talking to us and convinces us that we are less.  We start playing "the game".  Worst. Game. Ever.

It's the "I'm Completely Inadequate" game.  Also known as the "I'm Not Quite Good Enough" game.  Sometimes known as the "Nobody Else Ever Has Any Problems" game.  And there are all sorts of variations to this game.  The game has no rules.  Because we all make up our own rules.  And don't pretend you've never played this game.

It happens when we listen to our sister or our best friend or our neighbor or our church acquaintance or someone we just met.  You know her.  She bakes her own bread and grows all her own vegetables and upholsters furniture and makes drapes and has perfect children who are perfectly dressed and she has a perfect haircut and only eats organic food and goes on three cruises every year and never has any worries about money and she just finished her first novel which is now on the best-seller list.

The problem begins when we compare our worst day to her best.  Or at least what she reveals or we perceive that to be.

But the real problem is not that we're making a comparison of worst to best.  The real problem is making a comparison at all.

How much better life would be if we would stop playing this game.  If we could teach ourselves to stop making comparisons.  If we could learn to be content.  If we could shift our focus from what someone else is or has or does, and focus on becoming all that God intends each of us individually to be.  If we could keep our eyes fixed on Jesus rather than on someone else.  If we could focus on running the race He has set before us, rather than focusing on the race He set before someone else, or trying to run their race, or wishing we could. 

Perhaps that's the real secret to contentment.  Eyes fixed on Jesus.  Not on our neighbor or our friend or the celebrity on TV.  Not on what someone else has or does.  Eyes fixed on Jesus.  Not on playing that silly comparison game.  Which is the Worst. Game. Ever.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."  (Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV)