Do Not Covet

Covet: to want ardently (especially something that another person has).

A few weeks ago I picked me up a copy of a 1982 Family Home Evening Manual.

It was on the ward library “Give-Away” cart!

I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take some manuals home and have more ideas for Monday nights.

As I went through the manual I realized how the fashion certainly has changed, but the doctrines of the gospel remain the same.

One picture caught my eye.

The lesson was entitled, “Do Not Covet.”

As I looked at the picture I thought to myself, “WHOA! That is SO not a car I would covet.”

So I showed my husband, thinking he would react the same way.

“But honey," he said, "it’s a Cadillac!” (Like I know anything about cars). “Look at the man in his old jalopy. Don’t you think he’s thinking how nice it would be to drive a Caddy?”

“So what if it’s a Cadillac. It’s 30 years old!”

“Yes, but it wasn’t then.”

“But it is NOW!”

“I know honey,” he smiled, “but it is all relative, isn’t it? Isn’t that the point?”

And that WAS my point!

What we covet right NOW will soon be obsolete.

Once the fashion trend moves on, once the car design changes, or once entrophy sets in, we “move on” to covet something else that is better or faster or bigger or of a different color.

What I found remarkable is that combating this evil today is no different than what it was 28 years ago when published in this Family Home Evening Magazine:

Count your blessings,

Name them one by one.

Count your blessings;

See what God hath done.

Count your blessings!

Name them ONE by ONE.

Count your MANY blessings,

SEE what God hath done.