Happiness Waits at the Stuff Mart

     Have you ever found yourself walking through a store, looking at the items for sale and then compare it to the same item you have at home and become less than content?  You see the big fluffy bath towels and then think of your towels at home that have lost some of their fluffiness and brightness due to a few dozen spins through the washing machine and you find yourself less than content with your towels.  Maybe for you it is clothes, or cars, or a smart phone, or church, or pastor, or someone else’s job, or family, or spouse.  Coveting is one of those sins that can be easily hid and often times culturally encouraged, yet is toxic to our soul. 

       I find that I will have this general unease in my soul after going “shopping” at a big box store.  I look at things I don’t need and don’t have room for and then am unhappy that I didn’t buy anything.   I see it in my boys,  we go to Wal-Mart and we look at the ball gloves and bats and the allure of the new becomes overwhelming. Begging often becomes the main mode of communication.   Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, the powerful line from the hymn says.             

            The 10^th Commandment says “Thou shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, manservant, maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  

            How easily we think that “the next thing” will help us achieve the life that will satisfy, only to find out that those new towels don’t give the life that we thought they would. So we run to the next thing.  Meanwhile, Jesus calls to us. “Come to me all you who are thirsty and I will give you life giving water” He calls us to repent and run to him with our ever wandering hearts.  He is what our soul longs for.  He is what this coveting heart is thirsting for.