A Valentine's Special: What is love?

Chapter 7 Enduring and not Envious

To endure is to continue and carry on, despite obstacles or hardships. It means it lasts. It is to tolerate or put up with something unpleasant. It is to suffer patiently, without yielding and to remain firm under trial or suffering. It is to bear up under adversity. Thus, when you continue to love someone through a difficult or turbulent time, then you bear it. But when you continue to love them when the turbulent time has passed, then you endure it.

Many times people hold onto their love for someone while they are going through trouble, but once the trouble passes, they leave. Meaning their love does not endure.

Envy is having a resentful desire of something possessed by another and it is not limited to material possessions. It could be their personality, talents, virtues, etc. Envy is hatred, enmity, ill-feeling and rivalry. It is to feel displeasure or hatred towards someone for their good fortune or possessions. Envy is giving something to someone reluctantly and to begrudge them. It is to show malice or ill will and to complain violently.

If you do not measure yourself against others then you can not feel envy, because envy stems from measuring what I have and who I am against what I think you have and what I think you are. This means you subject your self worth to other people's opinions of you and your opinions of others, whether or not either opinions are true. It is a matter of being and feeling inferior, whilst screaming to everyone else that you are superior.

None of us are superior or inferior, that is our egos talking. We are all equal, because we are all human. Regardless of your job, position, stature or lack thereof, we are all the same, we are all human beings, and when we die, we all have only our souls left. Therefore, we are all equal. It is the soul which measures worth, not the human, and the soul measures according to God's standards of behaviour, not people's.