We always want more.

It starts as early as playground spats about who gets the best toy. It continues through a lifetime of temptation to break the tenth commandment as we covet any number of things that belong to our neighbor. It’s a very personal and internal struggle, and at the same time it’s the foundation upon which the very external system of capitalism is built. We always want more.

Our desire for more has ruined families, left many starving and in poverty, started wars, and brought our planet near to destruction. It’s also just made us unhappy and anxious, packing our schedules too full and making us envious of our friends on social media.

The world desperately needs the countercultural message that the church brings, which is that there is enough. Because God provides, there is enough.

You may object that for some people, there is not enough. This is true. Some people long for more because they really do not have enough of the basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care. This reality points out the broader problem of our covetous behavior even more. This is a justice issue. The reason that so many do not have enough is because others have too much and yet still grasp for more. For all of us together, there is enough, when we do justice.

Scripture is full of examples of God’s providence and our invitation to contentment. When the Lord sent manna to feed the Israelites in the wilderness, there was enough for each day, and no more. The Sabbath command calls God’s people to trust that six days of work will be enough, that God will provide what they need on the seventh. Psalm 104 lists many of God’s varied creatures (including the sea monster!), and then prays with confidence, “These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.” God gives us everything we need.

And yet we want more. The reason this sin, like others, is so tricky is because it is rooted in something good. To desire is human. In fact, God made us with desire. God made us to desire God, so that we would be drawn to God and be in relationship with God. God made us to enjoy the beauty of creation and to relish the abundance of gifts that God has given us.

Augustine prayed to God, saying, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” We look everywhere to satisfy our desire; we look everywhere to give us what we long for, when really the one who created us in the first place is the only one who can satisfy, the only one who can quench our thirst, the only one in whom we can find contentment.

The cure for coveting is not to desire less, but to desire God. The God who created us to desire God draws us again into divine love by the grace of Jesus. On the cross, our dissatisfaction with our circumstances is answered with complete forgiveness and restoration and peace. On the cross, we are reminded that it is enough, that Jesus has said that we are enough, that the beautiful world that God has created, including us, is enough.

This message is countercultural, so we need routine reminders to help us live in contentment. One such reminder comes in the Lord’s Prayer. “Give us today our daily bread,” we pray, content that God will answer this prayer, and also content to speak only of the concerns of today, trusting in God’s providence for the future.

Another such reminder is the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We are fed what seems just a morsel of bread and wine, without the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. But by the Spirit, we experience the sacrament as a feast of abundance. We know, in tasting the bread and wine, that the love of Jesus is enough for us, enough for this world.

I was convicted of this again when I came across this paragraph in a book on the Ten Commandments by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon. Hear their invitation to receive the sacrament as a beautiful reminder of our dependence on God, and God’s abundant provision:

As we come forward for the Eucharist, the church tells us to hold out our hands to receive. There, before the altar, with empty hands outstretched, we are empty, open, receptive, hungry. The church has reformed us from those who seize and grab and clutch into those who graciously receive. Our desire has been reformed, our lives bent toward the God who promised blessing for the hungry…In this feast of victory, we are given our hearts’ desire, even before we know how to name what we desired. We are fed, miraculously to discover that a bit of bread, a sip of wine, has satisfied our hunger…

As often as possible, let’s receive this reminder and rest in the abundance of the God who provides.