Re:Verse passage –Exodus 20:17 (day three)
“You shall not covet…anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Your neighbor is the one whose life draws near to yours in ways it doesn’t draw near to another’s. You each have the ability to encourage each other’s well-being and happiness. In fact, your neighbor is the best hope you have for being cared for in this life. And you are your neighbor’s best hope. Your taking issue with that particular ecology might be evidence for how much distance you’ve longed to put between your neighbor and yourself. The Bible sure spends an awful lot of time and energy pointing out how to structure life with neighbors for this to be the minor factor of life that many often take it to be. If your neighbor isn’t for you, who else have you got? The Bible would seem to say, “Very few.”