May 29

May 29 - 1 John 5

"This is love for God, to obey his commands"

Most of the time it is not that difficult to obey God. Think of the 10 commandments, they make sense. Don't murder, steal or commit adultery. Don't bear false witness, misuse God's name, have other gods or make idols. We understand these and they tend to just fit in with our lives. I do think the command about not coveting is very difficult in our culture. It seems as if the economy of our culture is built on the idea of getting us to covet new things. Isn't that the point of advertisements? A TV ad tries in 15-60 seconds to convince us a product we have never seen is essential to our lives. Suddenly, we must have what we did not even know existed 60 seconds before! I think that is coveting.

So we buy the new product that we had to have. Soon it is either outdated or we realize it doesn't really change anything, and we have are captivated by another new product we must have. It becomes a never ending cycle. What if we remembered that life is not found in our stuff, but in God? What if we learned to resist coveting those items?