Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Who among us hasn’t been there? In today’s first reading, Tobit, the devout and once-wealthy Israelite, has been literally blind for four years. Everyone, including Tobit himself, felt bad for the man. But it turned out he was also blind in a more significant way. He found it impossible to believe that his wife’s work could have been of such a caliber or her employers so kind that Anna would have been rewarded with a goat beyond her 
regular wages. Surely, he believed, the animal had been stolen.
In the same way, we can be skeptical or envious of the good that comes to those we know, family, friends, acquaintances. Well, yes, she’s a good mother, but her piety is nowhere near ours. Sure, he’s a good neighbor, but his devotion can’t hold a candle to ours. Why in the world would the Lord bless them more than us? We assume we know everything about the lives, hearts, and souls of others… and are more than ready to hold up our deeds and acts against theirs.
Anna’s retort to Tobit is worthy of being engraved upon our souls:
“Where are your acts of charity? Where are your righteous deeds? These things are known about you!” (Tobit 2:14)
The thing we forget is that when it comes to God, there’s plenty to go around. The amount of His goodness is unfathomable and endless. The bonuses are plentiful, in this world and the next. Better, then, to rejoice at the love and good fortune lavished on others. May it remind us of the generosities we receive ourselves… and take for granted.
