I got an email from Shane Raynor (please go read his blog and check out Ministry Matters, as well) playfully asking me about the (a bit disappointing?) iPhone announcement and if I had plan on getting one.
I can’t.
I have T-Mobile.
For another good year. And T-Mobile, I read, isn’t getting the iPhone any time soon, which doesn’t make sense, if they’re merging with AT&T soon.

Anyway, I currently have a myTouch 4g from T-Mobile.
When I first got it. I loved it.
I thought, since I have an iMac, a MacBook, an iPad, and an iPod… I’d figure, I can forgo the iPhone.

I was content with my decision.
And content with the phone. It had what I needed: texting, email, and gps. (I get lost easily. Even with the GPS).

Content, that is until one day, my wife came home with the white iPhone 4 (when the white ones were still new).
She had an iPhone 3 from her work place, but it’s glass got cracked, and since she was due for an upgrade, she got the white iPhone.

You have to understand that my wife is technologically challenged. She doesn’t even know what to do with an iPhone. She told me, “All I want it do is just make phone calls.”
“What!?” I cried. “Just phone calls?!?”
“I don’t care if it’s 4g, 3g whatever g. I need to make phone calls and receive phone calls.”

Ugh.

I set everything up for her, her email accounts, some games, some music…
And then all of a sudden, my myTouch seemed clunky, old and lame. Oh. And ugly.

I wanted to find a way out of my contract and get me an iPhone. Or at least an upgrade of a phone that was barely 6 months old.
It drove me crazy.
My wife, flaunting the iPhone and taunting me. “Oh, Joe. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me with this?” Of course, she wasn’t taunting, but that’s what it felt like.

It took me a good week to realize how awful I was being.
What in the world am I thinking?
I have a perfectly capable android phone.
I don’t need an iPhone.
And it’s truly, truly, truly sinful the way I was thinking.

I felt a bit embarrassed that I was falling into the trap of the-newer-the-better syndrome.

I’m okay now.
I’ve come to peace with my phone.
I really don’t need an iPhone. And to solidify the claim, I haven’t stepped foot into an apple store for about a while now. Okay, that’s a lie. A new Apple store opened in my neighbor. I HAD to go visit. But I walked away before I felt the urge to sinfully splurge.

An iPhone isn’t going to improve my life.
At the end of the day, it’s just a gadget. Something that I can live without.

I came across something interesting recently.
A Rabbi said that the 10th commandment, “Thou shall not covet” is less of a commandment, and more of a reward.
He said that if you followed the first 9 commandments faithfully, you would not have any reason to covet, and therefore, live a life of non-coveting and a life of devotion to God.

I like that.
I wonder if I’ll ever come to a point where I won’t be coveting for the next new thing in the wizardly world of gadgetry.