#179 Thankful

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”Exodus 20:17 NIV

This is the point at which the breaking of the other commandments begins. It is the pride of life that expresses injustice in that my neighbor has something that I do not. There is nothing more fueled by marketers, peers and our own egos, then this sense of entitlement. It is an infection that I had, and I even quit fishing for a time, because I could not do it the way I wanted. I could not do it the way my seemingly less deserving neighbor was able to. It was never that I deserved it more than he, but rather that I could not afford it, and the only thing that kept me from having fun or taking my kids fishing, was my lack of gratitude. I was unthankful, and dissatisfied. My eyes were not set upon Christ and what He had done for me, but rather on the material which I believed, regardless of cliche acknowledgments that "money doesn't buy happiness", that somehow it would. 

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20"But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

It is difficult to teach our children anything that is the opposite of our example.