Created for Work ~ Chapter 13 "Me Own Dog Tucker"

There is a fable by Aesop which corresponds well with this chapter of Created for Work. In the fable, a pot of honey is accidentally upset and its contents spill out upon the ground. The alluring scent soon brings around a large number of flies, who alight on it and begin to gorge themselves. However, their greed turns out to be fatal to them, for no sooner do they try and fly away than they discover that their wings are stuck fast in the sticky sweetness upon which they had so lately been feasting. Thus they died, sacrificing their lives for the sake of a little sweetness.

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Schultz tells us that his wife once owned a dog, a Welsh Corgi whom she named "Me Own Dog Tucker". Tucker loved to eat, and would gorge himself to fatness on anything he could. This greed for food ended up contributing to the dog's premature death, when he ate something he shouldn't have: it turned cement-like inside his intestines and killed him.

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Both of these stories warn against the same thing, a vice which will drag people down like an eighty-pound sack of lead. You probably already guessed what it is, and if you guessed "greed" you're dead on.

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When we let a desire or appetite for something consume us, we've let greed get a foothold; and unfortunately, greed isn't the type of enemy that will be satisfied with just a foothold. It will struggle for complete mastery. Imagine a man driving on a highway. At first he's cautious, and keeps his eyes where they should be. Gradually, however, he loses focus and gets distracted by a little speck on his windshield. He becomes so fascinated by it that he disregards all else. The consequence is that he begins spiraling out of control and crashes, causing a large wreck and injuring other drivers as well. Likewise, a man controlled by greed, who disregards everything else in an effort to gain what isn't his, who refuses to acknowledge Christ as the true focus of life - such a man will eventually destroy himself, and bring harm to those connected to him, too.

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Schultz makes several good points regarding the effects of greed on a person:

• Greed prevents a man from enjoying what he already possesses. It causes him to continually want what he doesn't have and leaves him in a state of discontent and ingratitude.
• Greed blinds a man's understanding. He loses the ability to see how little things fit into the bigger picture of life. By focusing intently on only one thing, a man loses the ability to  see how that object relates to other areas of life. 
• Greed causes a man to lose his awareness of God's presence. Instead of setting his affections on things above, he sets them on the temporary things of this earth. His priorities are switched, and he gets mixed up.

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When I think of greed, what comes to mind automatically is Ebenezer Scrooge - the scraping, stingy, grasping miser of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. But greed attacks from more angles than the counting house - it attacks at home, at school, at play, and at the job site. Schultz says, "For many folks, life is a rat race... they race after something in the distance, trying to get there before any other rats arrive. When they achieve that car, house, wife, career, or other object they've been chasing, they pause only long enough to put it into their shopping cart before zooming on to get something more. Rat-race runners live discontentedly, without understanding and without the secure pleasure of God's presence." 

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"I know what God wants to give you. It's a contented heart, full of understanding and joyfully aware of His presence. May His desire be yours today."

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"His watchmen are blind: they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant."

~ Isaiah 56:10-12

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Persevero,

Scribe