In the parable of the prodigal, the father reminded the son who complained about the good things that were being heaped upon his wayward brother (Luke 15:31), "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." How many times we could hear our heavenly Father say the same thing to us if we would only stop to listen instead of complain about or envy the good our brother is receiving.
Good is without limit, and we can enjoy just as much of it as we include in our consciousness. No one else can take our share or keep us from having it; nor does the distribution of good mean for a single moment that the supply is being diminished. On the contrary, the more good is distributed, the more freely it seems to flow.
Can we conceive of ourselves as being worried or envious because someone else is making constant use of the numbers one to ten? Of course not. The numbers are impersonal, existing as ideas governed by the principle of mathematics; and the more they are properly used, the more beneficial they will prove to be. We can readily see that although we use the number six over and over again, it is in no way worn out, nor are our fellow men kept from deriving as much good as we do from using the same number six.
