I Want It ... I Need It!
My wife and I went for a motorcycle ride a couple weeks ago. Now I have an old Yamaha Virago 1100 for which I paid $3700. And it works just fine. I ride it to work and Barb and I get out for the occasional longer ride. But when we were on the ferry to Whidbey Island, I guy pulled up beside us in a new Triumph Thunderbird. I would love a Triumph Thunderbird. It is such a great cruiser. And you can get one for just $13,000, base price.
I don’t want a Triumph Thunderbird. I need a Triumph Thunderbird.
The last of the 10 Commandments talks about coveting. It addresses the problem of not being content. When we possess that which we have coveted, we only begin a new cycle of coveting more.
Now just as I was getting over this Triumph Thunderbird, on the same ferry, this time on the way home, another guy pulls up beside us in a 2011 Ducati that was only about $20,000. I don’t want one … I need one!
Our failures so often come from wanting control of our own lives and wanting more. We think we know what we want and we want it now. I want it. I need it. We live with the perspective that if we can only possess that one special thing, we will find happiness. And so we want a boat that is three feet longer, a house that is 1,000 feet larger, a car with 100 more horsepower, a job that pays $20,000 more, and the list goes on.
Ambition is not necessarily a bad thing. The gifts of God in our lives are not bad things. Coveting is to go over the line and lust after the thing that seems to be just beyond our grasp and rather than live with joy, we find discontent is a steady state because there is always more.
David Robinson, known as “the Admiral”, was one of my all-time favorite basketball players, no doubt because he was a graduate of the Naval Academy. Robinson played many years for the San Antonio Spurs. Robinson observed Michael Jordan embrace the trophy from the Chicago Bull’s first championship season “as if a piece of medal could validate a life.”
“Here I am,” Robinson said, “with five cars, two houses and more money than I ever thought I’d have. What more could I ask for? But where am I going? Here’s Michael Jordan. He has more than me and boy, I’d like to have some of the things he has. But is the world setting a trap for us?
“What I had should have been plenty, but no matter how much I had it didn’t seem like enough because material things can never satisfy your deepest needs. That’s when I started to realize that I needed the Lord.
If we always need more to be satisfied, we condemn ourselves to a life of discontent, but if we can find contentment, whatever our circumstances, joy awaits us.