I once had a boss who, at every staff meeting, called out and commended a specific member of the team. His intention was to encourage and inspire us fellow workers, but all too often the results were petty jealousy and envy, as we looked at one another and muttered under our breath, "Why did they get called out this week? Doesn't the boss know I'm doing good stuff too?"

I'd often have to stop myself and say, 'Why can't I be more generous? Why can't I be happy when somebody else succeeds? Am I that insecure?'

Our failure to rejoice in the joy of others often stems from our outlook on the world.

And it starts at a young age. You may remember in school every time somebody got an 'A' on a paper, it was one less 'A' to be doled out to the rest of us.

We are programmed to look at the world as a zero-sum game, a place of scarcity, where there's only so much to go around and when somebody else gets it, I don't! Instead of looking at the world as a place of abundance, where there is plenty to go around, which is where Jesus takes us in Sunday's gospel.

That's when we will hear that iconic  story of the Prodigal Son, the youngster who demands his Father's inheritance early, then goes and blows it on loose living, only to return when it dawns on him that the loving home that he left behind was actually what he was looking for all along.

When his older brother hears about his father's acceptance of this Prodigal Son, he becomes furious, jealous, and consumed with the same feelings we often feel when someone else gets a gift that we don't.

And what the older son does not understand is the Father's generosity, the abundance of God's love, that the loving home now shown to the younger son has been there all along for everybody.

I wonder how often God is telling you and me to chill out, because there's enough for everybody, everything's going to be okay, your time will come, for we are always, always, in the loving hands of our heavenly father.

So next time something good happens to somebody else, and those feelings of petty jealousy and envy come knocking, let's find a way to put things in perspective and look at those feelings as reminders of God's grace, God's goodness to all, and let's find a way to bless that other person, just as God does, knowing that God's abundance isn't just for that person, but for everybody.