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SPEAKING TO THE SOUL

You must not covet your neighbour’s house. You must not covet your neighbour’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbour.
  
Exodus 20:17 NLT
 
Coveting is a yearning to possess. Now, “yearning” is quite a powerful word. It speaks of a deep and emotional longing for something. Such yearning creates restlessness within and the focus of its attention proves impossible to avoid. It is all-consuming and controlling.
 
In a material society, advertisers constantly seek to awaken such yearnings within us. This is partly to compensate for low self-confidence and also to fill the vacuum that empty lives create. In many ways the repeated trips to the shopping mall is a quick fix for the boredom that embraces us the moment we have time available with no obvious distractions. It is because we are wired in this way that covetousness is birthed – like David gazing upon Bathsheba (see 2 Samuel 11), yearning for her and entering a destructive path. The response to coveting – that is, yearning for something that is not my own – is to focus on what is mine.
 
We have observed marriages failing in increasing numbers over the years. My own experience, which is all I have, is that having been married twice, my first wife dying aged 54, I have discovered that marriage, while the same covenant, is not the same experience. We are each wired differently and the skill and the demands of marriage require me to learn and adjust to the person to whom I’m married. And, of course, this is mirrored by my spouse. Jayne is very different to my first wife. If, however, I assume that she is the problem in my life, it would be all too easy to look around and covet a false but apparently quick fix for the ills I feel.
 
To avoid the yearning is to take responsibility for focusing on what I have and where I am and celebrating God here in the reality of my existing present.

QUESTION
   
Be honest, what things does your heart really yearn for?

PRAYER
    
Lord, may I not be satisfied in the delights of temporary things but instead delight myself in you.


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