Relatively speaking, it did not take much time after Home and Garden Television was launched in December of 1994 for the channel to catapult close to the top of U.S. ratings.
From preserving historic homes and fixing up 1960s ranch-style houses, to flipping investment properties, finding perfect vacation homes, bringing whole towns back to life and catching inside glimpses of celebrity mansions, HGTV currently boasts 45 programs with new episodes and over 250 former shows which still might air as reruns.
Since its inception in the mid-1990s, HGTV has had an enormous impact on the home industry, even in the midst of a few housing booms and crashes. Undoubtedly, we have witnessed a meteoric rise in home improvement and do-it-yourself interest. In 1994 Home Depot reported net sales of $12.47 million and an increase to $108.2 billion in 2018. For those same years, Lowe’s Home Improvement’s net sales skyrocketed from $6.1 million to $71.3 billion.
Like many of my friends, I have gone through spells of being intrigued by certain HGTV shows. Fascinated by preservation and renovation, I look forward to the end of an episode when the results are revealed.
More often than I would like to admit publicly, fascination can give way to dissatisfaction. Seeing such wonderful renovations often kicks into gear my mental list of desired home improvements. This inevitably leads to at least a small sense of a lack of gratefulness for what I already have.
Have you ever looked at another family that seems to have it almost all together and wish your family could be more like that? Do you occasionally compare your appearance, clothes, jewelry or shoes to that or those of someone else? Have you ever felt jealousy about a friend’s or neighbor’s vehicle or home? Of course, the goal of advertising is to entice us to desire particular products. Big bucks are made by making us less content.
God certainly understands our tendencies. At the end of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:17 we are told, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
We see even in young children this human characteristic of wanting what someone else has that we do not.
It is up to each of us as individual Christians to weigh our desires and how they fit into godly living. Jesus and the Apostle Paul leave us with valuable insight. In Luke 12:15, Jesus reminds us: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
An Paul said this in 1 Timothy 6:6-10: “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
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