Day 76

"You shall not steal." Exodus 20:15

"You shall not steal" is not a commandment that I personally struggle with. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because somewhere along the line someone (likely my father) instilled in me a very strong sense of right and wrong where stealing is concerned. Perhaps it’s because I’ve too often been on the receiving end of this sin – a hand-tooled silver bracelet; pictures of an entire summer spent backpacking through Europe; a VCR; a favorite shirt; my engagement ring; my words (I happened upon them on a web site in Canada - thank God for Google, I guess!); a digital camera with an irreplaceable span of my daughter’s life on the memory card; my identity (that was a whole lot of fun trying to rectify, let me tell you!); a man I loved . . . enough said about that. The list, as I think about it, seems endless.

I know all too well the utter violation of mind and soul that occurs with theft, the loss of security and trust in your fellow man that follows. After the theft of my VCR from my home, my porch lights stayed on every night for five years. It wreaked havoc with the electric bill, for sure, but offered at least a modicum of (false?) security to my mind.

So, while I struggle with many things, yes, stealing just isn’t one of them. In fact, I’m almost anti-theft. I’m the one you want to find your wallet with $1,000 tucked inside, because I’ll go to great lengths to ensure you get it back. And have . . . I don’t cheat on my taxes. I don’t pad my expense reports. I don’t "borrow" so much as a paper clip from the office without asking. That doesn’t make me a saint, mind you, just someone for whom this particular sin doesn’t seem to be a problem.

And so, having been tasked with writing not just one, but several devotionals on the subject, I’ve had a hard time coming up with something that "fits," that’s meaningful, that’s relevant. This particular devotional is no exception . . .

But here’s what I’ve observed, having been on the "front lines" of the commandments we’ve studied so far and due to be for the ones that are yet to come: they are intricately connected. Hello?! This should surprise me why? Isn’t that so like God? Isn’t that so like us that he has to tell us what he desires of us from 10 different angles before we finally (hopefully) get it?

Stealing, adultery, murder, taking the Lord’s name in vain, forgetting the Sabbath, not creating images, not honoring our mother and father – and, still to come, not bearing false witness and not coveting – all have to do with God’s first command: not having any other gods before Him. When we fall prey to any of these sins, we are really guilty of breaking the first commandment, of not putting Him first, of not trusting fully in Him, of not making Him Lord of our lives.

Wow! And it only took me 8 whole commandments to realize that . . .

p.s. to our blog readers: Hindsight is 20-20 . . . I reread this devotional after a brother kindly commented on it and realized that for someone who doesn't know me, I probably came across as a sanctimonious brat. Please know that is not my heart, nor was it my intent in writing this to convey that I am somehow above the sin of stealing, or immune from it. I most assuredly am not, and as my brother in the Lord wisely pointed out, to have that attitude makes us very vulnerable to the enemy's wiles.

My point, although I can now see how it was not conveyed very well, was that in the pecking order of personal sins that plague me, stealing is not at the top of the list, which, for the first time this summer, made it hard for me to find something to share in a devotional. And then, God, in his wisdom, revealed something important to me: that any sin we commit causes us to put Him second in our lives.

To steal a line (pun intended) from Carol Wimmer's poem, "When I say I am a Christian, I'm not claiming to be perfect; my flaws are far too visible, but God believes I'm worth it."

Pray: Father, thank you for your patience, for your perseverance, for your slowness to come to anger in teaching us the paths upon which you would have us walk. Help us, Lord, to fix your words in our hearts and minds, to tie them as symbols on our hands and bind them to our foreheads; to teach them to our children, talking about them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road; when we lie down and when we get up. Let us write them on the door frames of our houses and on our gates, to carefully observe them, and above all, to love you Lord; to walk in all your ways and to hold fast to them.