This year I’m simply trying to focus on my walk with God in a busy time when God is so easily forgotten. Honestly I think my relationship with God, whatever that means, has suffered a bit in recent weeks. I could blame a number of things, but at the core of it all is me. I’m the problem. I’m not sure why, but I know it’s one of the normal cycles of a walk with God. It’s just the wrong time of the year for one of these down times to happen…..

Anyway, with Christmas only a few days away, I survey my living room covered with toys and grandkids playing, having fun, enjoying the day and we have yet to open gifts! They don’t need another thing and yet more will come in just a few days. Why do we do this? Will we answer for this crazy excess? I wonder. Yes, Scrooge is at work and I’m him. Sorry, I’m working on it, but for now I am just not into this season of the year.

Christmas is supposed to be a time to remember what God has given. Do we ever do that? Do we realize what he has done? Do we talk about it with our kids? This year we will give our grandkids chickens….chickens that will show up in India for a family in need. I would like to make it even more, maybe goats or cows next year……I would love to make our Christmas about those who have nothing. Now that would be a wonderful Christmas!

As I read the Facebook posts I see wives writing about cooking, decorating, buying gifts, tired, frazzled and worn out. Why are we doing this? Yes, Scrooge is alive and well, but in part I’m tired of this gluttonous consumerism in a country that has too much already. Ok, I’m done. I feel better already. Merry Christmas!

Visit Mike at Finishing Well….bring chickens.

The post Christmas Thoughts first appeared on CHRISTIAN REP.

Have you ever been thirsty? I mean really thirsty…your mouth dry, lips parched, your tongue clinging to the roof of your mouth. If you have ever been that thirsty you long for just a sip of water. Thirsty….it’s how we describe a need for something that is vital to life. We cannot live without water. If we went without it for even a few days our health would diminish quickly. We must have water to live.

David wrote of another kind of thirst. He wrote in this Psalm of a thirst for God. A craving for that relationship, that presence that could only be equated to a thirsty deer in the wilderness looking for water. We all have this thirst, this need for God, but many try to quench their thirst with other things.

Like water to the body, God is the only thing that will really meet our thirst’s need. Around me I watch a world looking for relief from their thirst in other ways, but the only one, the only water for the soul is God himself. Those who look for relief from other sources will never quench their thirst, they simply sate their thirst for a moment with things that don’t satisfy.

I feel that thirst in my life. I so want some “face time” with God, I so want to satisfy my thirsty soul with his presence. It’s his face I need to seek, it’s his presence in my life that will quench my thirsty soul. Like David, I thirst for God. Lord, would you quench my thirsty?

Visit Mike at Finishing Well.

The post Thirsty first appeared on CHRISTIAN REP.