It’s 2024, and for many of us that is completely unbelievable. I heard one person describe 2023 as the “first real year” since 2019. Yes, we’re all four years older and important things may have happened for you. However, until 2023, a lot of people were walking around with that vague sense of falling behind on something. It’s like that feeling when you missed a couple days of school, and you feel like you need to catch up.

Comparing the world that is presented to us to our internal monologue we can feel like we’re getting left behind. “EVERYONE has figured it out but me.” “EVERYONE is a better parent than me.” “EVERYONE is making more money—has a better job than me.” Whatever your personal fear may be, we are told from multiple angles that we aren’t good enough or smart enough, and the only solution is to “buy this product, support this candidate, join this club, etc.”

All this fear, all this comparison is a distraction. We have to push through the noise and remember that we have a God who sees all our shortcomings and says, “You have freedom from perfection!”

In 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 Paul says, “8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about [my struggle], that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We mistakenly think of most authors in the Bible as super pious saints. They wrote the Bible, they’re close to God, they never struggled or sinned. We forget that they were people just like us who were doing their best to make it through the day. No matter what you think you might be missing, God wants us to look to his grace to be enough.

We don’t need to be perfect, we just need to rely on the one who is.