Part 3 Of 6: Idle Watching Series

Making The Most Of My Life: Six Ways We Waste Our Day

Part 3 of 6: Idle Watching

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Matthew 6:22-23 (NKJV)

Kentucky: Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With their vehicle’s license plate still attached to the bumper.

Indiana: A man walked up to a cashier at a grocery store and demanded all the money in the register. When the cashier handed him the loot, he fled--leaving his wallet on the counter.

The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypisalanti, Michigan at 7:50am, flashed a gun and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.

(Location Unknown): A man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled-- leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer? Fifteen dollars.

Burglars in Larch Barrens, Md., tried to cut through a safe using a Laser Tag gun.

When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.

Sobering illustrations of greed leading to death.

"Leo Wilson, Jr., 16, was shot to death for his Nike sneakers and satin sports jacket, police say." Or how about this one, "Wheatley High School junior Adam Joseph Martin, 18, gave haircuts to neighborhood kids to earn enough to buy his new $125 Nike athletic shoes last week. Saturday night, staring down the barrel of a 9mm pistol on a Houston street, he handed over his prized possessions to two robbers, who fatally shot him anyway." [Darren Ethier. The Crippling Effects Of Envy. Sermoncentral.com.]

"What causes wars, and what causes fights among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." James 4:1-3 (RSV)

Webster’s Dictionary: Envy: "a feeling of antagonism towards someone because of some good which he is enjoying but which one does not have oneself || a coveting for oneself of the good which someone else is enjoying…"

Vine’s: "envy, is the feeling of displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity of others; this evil sense always attaches to this word…envy desires to deprive another of what he has"

Dr. Gary Collins (Homemade, July, 1985): To envy is to want something which belongs to another person.

In other words…ENVY is saying… "I like what you’ve got, I don’t like the fact that you have it, and I want it!!!" [Darren Ethier. The Crippling Effects Of Envy. Sermoncentral.com.]

We continue our six part series "Making The Most Of My Life: Six Ways We Waste Our Day"

1. Idle Living-following empty pursuits

2. Idle Speech-misuse of our tongue

Today: Idle Watching-wasting our time in the empty pursuit of wanting.

Can categorize this wanting under several terms:

Envy

Coveting

Lusting

Greed

"All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied." Ecclesiastes 6:7 (RSV)

"Sheol & Abbadon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man." Proverb 27:20 (RSV)

Envy is such a plague to humanity that it is ranked as one of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’