Lately - wrangling Christmas lights, folding laundry, shoveling snow, wrapping presents, booking travel, scrubbing pots and pans, and trying to keep up with email - I've been thinking along different lines. It's a good thing there's a clear commandment against it, or I'm sure I'd covet not my neighbor's husband, but my neighbor's maidservant.
Who wouldn't want a maid? I wouldn't mind having a manservant, either.
I have never (consciously) coveted my neighbor's ox or donkey, however.
Seriously, contentment - and just being good - are not anybody's natural state, are they? It requires some kind of spiritual or supernatural power to begin transforming us into people who really are OK with what life may bring and willing to go along with it.
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. May it be to me as you have said."
(Luke 1:38)
5 comments:
It's so true - contentment is a very elusive quality humanly speaking. Society surrounds us with things or lifestyles we haven't got and our human nature makes us think we'd be happier if we had them.
Here's a song I have learnt to sing when I'm struggling with this:
Father let me dedicate all this life to thee,
In whatever worldly state Thou wouldst have me be,
Not from sickness, pain or care,
Freedom dare I claim,
This oh Lord would be my prayer;
Glorify Thy name.
Be glorified in me, be glorified...
Can a child presume to choose where or how to live?
Can a Father's love refuse all the best to give?
Let my glad heart while it sings,
Thee in all proclaim,
And whatever the future brings,
Glorify Thy name...
(I don't know who wrote it, but Graham Kendrick sings it on a Spring Harvest CD!)
I constantly need to remind myself that God really does want what's best for me.
And when I can keep my eyes fixed on him, I really do find the contentment my heart desires. But it is a struggle against my humanity, which is only won when I rest in God and allow him to work in me.
I need more of him, less of me in my life.
i sometimes covet my neighbor's cats. mostly cooper, even if he is getting to be old and gimpy. and a cat i met on the internet, henry. he's so cute and he has sideburns! lucy is cute too, but i have a weakness for white kitties of the non-persian variety.
Fiona - thanks for writing. I appreciate you!
Wonder where I can find that song? Spring Harvest stuff not distributed in the US, I'm pretty sure. Hmmm... googling a few lines, I see it's a 150-year-old hymn! How cool is that? Our struggles are not unique. Hmmm... looks like Matt Redman recorded it somewhere. I'll look for it!
Take a look at some recent postings on the topic of happiness, from a guy in Bolivia named DaRonn Washington. I enjoy his blog: http://daronnwashington.wordpress.com/
Meg - Deb bought a bottle of "catnip" spray for use in encouraging Lucy to scratch her scratching pole (and not our furniture, such as it is). You should have seen how crazy she went over it.
I think Deb - who has suffered from arthritis all of her life - gets a vicarious pleasure out of how much mobility, flexibility, and energy can be wrapped up in six and a half pounds. Boy can she jump!
I was pondering the same things after reading 2 Samuel 12:1-9 (about David and Bathsheba). Came to the conclusion that as God has provided what he has provided for me, it is just not right to want to take what He has provided for someone else - to look around and say “I want more.”.
Which is easy to say...
I'd have to admit that I have found myself appreciating a married woman I know and wondering what it would be like if her husband and my wife passed away (gently and peacefully - love the way you put that!). Then, like you, cutting off that line of thought. Guess it's not that unusual, or we wouldn't have a commandment about it!
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