Be Still And Know

Proverbs 23.17-18 NLT 'Don’t envy sinners, but always continue to fear the Lord. You will be rewarded for this; your hope will not be disappointed.' Here the writer tells us that we shouldn’t envy sinners, but the tenth commandment is much wider than that. It tells us that we shouldn’t envy at all. The last commandment tells us that we shouldn’t covet our neighbour’s house, wife, servant, ox, donkey or anything else that they own. We may admire and appreciate everything about our neighbour’s life but, when it turns to envy, the rot has set in. Envy is a potential problem for all of us because it has the ability to creep up on us slowly and subtly. It doesn’t announce itself with a fanfare, but slowly worms its way into our thinking. We see our neighbour’s beautiful house, lovely family and fabulous garden and start to wish that all those things were ours. After a while, we start to resent the fact that our neighbour has all those things and, through no fault of our own, we don’t. Surely we deserve just as