Close your eyes (well I guess you can't read if your eyes are closed), imagine Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, or Easter...picture getting to that family gathering & inhaling the aroma of glazed ham & yeast rolls. Mouth watering yet? Set up before you, buffet style, is a smorgous-board of a feast. Now tell me, do you go for the small round dinner plate, or do you throw dieting to the wind & grab the Styrofoam tray (complete with 5 compartments just begging to old a little bit of everything)? I don't know about you, but at my family get togethers that's a silly question...it's the Styrofoam tray every time! Ham, cheesy potatoes, macaroni & cheese, corn, green beans (not so much for me), 7-layer salad, deviled eggs, slaw, mashed potatoes, & best of all warm yeast rolls oozing with butter (my mouth's watering just typing about it!)...All this & I haven't even mentioned the goodies on the dessert table yet! The only problem is that Styrofoam tray doesn't have enough compartments for everything! Holiday food is the best food of the year & given the opportunity & rarity of getting it, you better believe we load up our trays & dig in! Sadly enough because the tray's too small (or appetite's too big) I only get a small sample of each item & even worse about a half hour after the meal (every single time) that dreadfully way-too-full felling rises up. It never ceases to amaze me that I don't think about that miserable after-effect until it's already in effect!
Over time it has dawned on me how much our lives resemble that loaded down tray of food. We are so busy! Every segment of our lives is filled with a side dish of activities or hobbies, obligation or acts of pleasure. We shove ourselves full of these things & then have to wonder why we don't even have time to think or to truly enjoy the things we are doing. Each holiday by the time I get to eat that delicious deviled egg, I'm so full that I'm merely eating it just so it doesn't get wasted. How often do we put things on our plate that we would really enjoy, but it turns out just to be a burden?
For years now, my pastor has been speaking to this issue, cautioning us against the Western culture's tendency to be busy...and over the years I have realized how right he is & how imperative it is to heed his caution. Again I want you to imagine something with me...think of your life as that Styrofoam tray. You have one large compartment for your main dish & second large compartment for your favorite side, & then several little ones for any additional items you like. What is your tray filled up with (metaphorically speaking of course)? Does God comprise the biggest segment? Is your family filling up the second largest spot? What takes up the remaining space? Work, travel, hobbies, your children's activities? Is your tray so full that you don't really & truly get to savor any of it, or even worse are the wrong things in the wrong compartments? Career in the main dish spot? Pleasure seeking in the second priority?
So often we think only of the need to purge our lives of sin, but Sisters, I truly think we must reevaluate this mindset. Satan knows better than to steal our focus with the typical sins, but He deceptively lures us away with the busyness of our lives. A career, travel, hobbies, sports, volunteer work, Sunday school teaching, friends, & so on...those are good things. Just like all the side dishes at my holiday feast taste divine, so are these areas of our lives a delicious part of life...but all together they can often add up to that miserable full feeling. How often does a "side dish" interfere with the taste of the main course? At first it seems trivial to miss a Sunday at church because of a ball game, or to grab fast food & get home just in time to put the kiddos to bed because of long days at work or because of jetting all over from soccer practice to dance, piano lessons, & then gymnastics. Maybe it's even harder to see than that, a gift of ministry turns into an obligations, & that sprouts a seed of resentment. Our time, our focus, our thoughts, our passion can only divided in so many ways until at last no one or nothing truly gets the best we have to offer.
It's time to downsize to that dinner plate...to choose a main dish (hopefully your faith) & a couple of sides (family, friends, or etc) & to truly enjoy the taste & satisfaction that comes from consuming just enough. We are greatly dishonoring our Father when we give Him the last morsels of ourselves...we are jeopardizing the health (spiritual, emotional, physical) of our families when we just squeeze them in...we are poor friends when we haven't the time nor energy to truly listen & truly relate. Our lives were meant for more...God has prepared a feast of goodness for each of us, but that doesn't mean to make gluttons of ourselves...to indulge in every thing offered. We must choose what first glorifies the Father & secondly what builds His kingdom. We are far more effective when we enjoy & indulge in a few things well than when we overflow our tray. Be not fooled Sisters, your family, your husband, your children, your parents, grandparents, siblings, & etc are a mission field....be intentional in your enjoyment & efforts in that area. Do not view the removal from your life of certain things as a loss or missing out, but as an opportunity to really taste, enjoy, & offer your best to what remains on your plate.
I pray that the Aroma of the Spirit will waft upon you, that the Taste of God's love will Satisfy you, & that your Thirst will be filled in Him!
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