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.   

"There's No Place Like Home"

Dorothy clicks her ruby red slippers together 3 times and repeats the magical phrase “there’s no place like home”, then with the magic of movies, Dorothy ends up back in her bedroom on her beloved Kansas farm, her trip to the land of OZ only a dream.  I still get a lump in my throat when I think of it.  I can see Dorothy sitting on her bed, with the music building  saying the line with joy- "there's no place like home" .

The 9^th Commandment says “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house”    God knew what he is was doing when he gave the people of Israel this commandment.  They had just left their homes in Egypt and would be living in tents- and soon be longing for the homes of their neighbors. 

            God has hard wired us to have a home. A place of rest and safety. A place that is ours. Coveting another’s home shows that something is wrong in our soul. We are no longer grateful for the place that God has given us. We are being pulled into the unending cycle of thinking a bigger, nicer, cleaner, newer home will heal the longing for a home that our soul has.

         Karen and I talk about the feeling that we get when we travel to our respective "homes" - the place where we spent our first 18 years of our life, and which neither of us have lived close to for the last 30 years. The pull we feel to go back there. The stirring in our soul as we drive down the roads that lead us to those farms.  It is a powerful thing. 

            The truth is that our longing for a home for our soul is ultimately satisfied only in God himself. Jesus is our rest. He is our home.  Our temporary address here on earth is a gift from him to be enjoyed and cared for and used for rest for our bodies and a harbor for us and others. Yet it is a temporary address. We are created for God. Sin beckons us to find our home in anything but God.   Through faith in Jesus we have the promise of an eternal home with him. Then we will be able to finally truly say,  “there’s no place like home”