A Glass of Wine in a Yacht with a View

It is amazing what passing a bone through your gut successfully will do to your outlook on life. Lucky actually followed me to the food bowl, wagged his tail and perked his ears. It is the first conclusive sign he will survive that I have seen since last Thursday when he swallowed the bone. He despises the healthy food the vet made us buy ($30 worth of yuck in Lucky's mind), but if I mix defatted chicken broth (homemade with the help of a skinny chicken), and bits of turkey in with the yuck food, he eats it. Poor Honeybun continues to hover nearby, wondering why the big dog keeps getting all these luscious perks that she is denied. I throw her pieces every now and then so she doesn't feel left out, but remind her, "Honeybun, just be grateful it was he and not you that swallowed that impassable bone. Be thankful for your good health and stop wanting what others have."

That is called, "Coveting". Honeybun is not alone in coveting. My sister sent a picture of a friend on the back of a plush yacht, with her legs up on cushioned seats, Seattle in the background, lovely blue waves lapping at the sky, and to top it all off, a glass of wine in her hand. I began to covet. And I mean covet big time. I wanted a yacht, the view, and the wine. Suddenly, my shady lawn with towering oak trees didn't look quite as lovely, quite as idyllic. My most favorite recliner didn't feel so luxurious.

Coveting is one of the surest ways to build dissatisfaction in life. To long for what you don't have, instead of noticing all you do have, is the absolute best way to lose what you do have and end up with something worse. Our society is largely based on coveting. Every commercial taps into the coveting gene we all possess. And at the root of coveting is competition. If she has the glass of wine in a yacht with a view, then she is better than me, and I want to be better than her, so I want the glass of wine in a yacht with a view. And the basis of competition is pride. If she has all those things, I should have all those things because I deserve them and am worthy of them. And the basis of pride is separation from God. If God really loved me and was who He claims to be, He would see I deserve a glass of wine in a yacht with a view. But since He has not given me a glass of wine in a yacht with a view, He must not be God.

And pretty soon, we are spending our life swirling after something we can't have or don't have, raising a path of dust in our wake rather than a legacy of faith. Sometimes it takes something quite devastating to bring us back to our senses, back to our knees. Sometimes a beloved dog almost dying reminds us how fleeting life is and how important it is just to be grateful for every breath we take.

"Since when did I become a beloved dog?" Lucky asks me, since he knows I have at times referred to him as the stupid dog.
"Since we almost lost you," I said, scritching his neck.

Hebrews 12: 28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe,




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