From Your Own Cistern
Captain's Log: Table Time ~ Friday, September 5th, 2025 ~ Lauds
and rejoice in the wife of your youth, 19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her... fill you at all times with delight...
We began this morning by noticing the wisdom of enjoying what belongs to us and not seeking that which belongs to someone else. We regularly need to draw the children's attention to their anxiety for things, often things that others have and the children do not. This passage is a good reminder that the Lord gives us good things to enjoy, and to enjoy as our own. What has the Lord given us to enjoy, to delight in, that we lose sight of when we begin to delight in what others have?
Then I noticed some deeper contours. ‘What do you think comes first, adultery or covetousness?’ We checked our definition of coveting. 'Desiring what belongs to others.' So covetousness or adultery? Not immediately clear, but then it dawned on the table that a desire for a thing comes before the taking of the thing. I flipped to Genesis 3.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Eve first began to desire what God had not given, then she took what was prohibited. We do the same thing. We turned to Jesus. ‘This is what Jesus is talking about, isn’t it, when he says if we ‘look with lust’ we have already committed adultery in the heart?’
We finished with verse 21. There is a temptation to smooth over, perhaps even ignore, the motivations in Scripture of God's watchfulness, God who sees all that we do. But He doesn’t think we should avoid this. He warns us specifically in this way. ‘Sometimes it seems like temptation is offering a secret path to sin, doesn’t it? A path that no one knows, at a time when no one is watching. What’s the problem with this?’
21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths.
I exhorted us to delight in what God has given us. It’s good! It’s to be enjoyed. This is an important correction to a hasty reading of Genesis 1-2, which the children will hear on the lips of critics. The Lord God did not create a world bursting with life and goodness and command His creatures, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.” These are human regulations. The Lord God said, “I give you.” That simple phrase is worth pondering. “Be fruitful and multiply.” What a blessing! We prayed, and away we went.