Coveting Lesson

Monday, I was babysitting my nephew and 2 neices. Our neighbor had given an Easter basket to the 5 year old at an earlier date but hadn't been able to give the 8 and 3 year old kids their Easter baskets. So, we all walked over to the neighbor's house so she could give them their baskets. Naturally, this caused problems because 2 children had candy and 1 didn't. The 5 year old decided that it wasn't fair for the 3 year old to have candy and not be willing to give it to her. I told her that the candy was his and that she had already eaten hers a long time ago. I decided to try and offer her other candy that I had in the house (which she always wants to have) but she refused to take any. The only candy she wanted was the candy the 3 year old was eating.

This became the perfect opportunity to teach a lesson on coveting. I know that God gave me the words to say to the kids because I honestly had never even thought about the reason why "thou shalt not covet" is one of the 10 commandments. I learned a little something too!

I told her (or shall we say, God told all of us) that it was wrong to want what belongs to other people. I told her that kind of thing is called coveting and God doesn't want us to do it. I asked her if she knew why God doesn't want us to covet and she said "No." I told her that when we want what someone else has , it makes us sad and miserable because we can't have it. This also makes God sad because He doesn't like to see us sad. I told her that God made these rules for us so we could follow them and be happy all the time. The rules are there to help us!

This seemed to stop the issue altogether and we had a great day from then on.

The lesson learned is:

Stop looking around at what everyone else has and what everyone else is doing. Look ONLY at Jesus Christ. He's the only one who can fill that need that you have!