I Think I Am Missing the Point!!!

I just returned from spending a gorgeous 6 days at the Atlantis in the Bahamas.  Everything there is beautiful, breathtaking, and EXPENSIVE!!!!

A cheap meal, while delicious, would cost around $50 for the two of us.  Almost without thinking, we would eat, pay, and go on our merry way.  We were surrounded by wealth.  Someone mentioned an outlet store where you could get things from the pricier hotel stores for cheap.  So, being that I love a bargain, we searched it out...a bathing suit on sale for $285 but that was of course marked down from the $450 originally!  I was astounded and so quick to pass judgement.  I mean don't these people know that a $450 bathing suit could feed a village in Africa or send several Guatemala children to school.

It just so happened while there, I was reading the book Kisses from Katie (a book I would highly recommend).  So, there I was sitting on the beach soaking up the sun with a belly full of expensive, tasty food, and passing judgement on all these "people" who were spending $12 on a drink and $450 on a bathing suit.  Then, it hit me, I am just like "those people" and maybe worse...I have seen poverty,

I have vowed I would not get sucked in to the American "materialistic mentality" again,  and yet I have.  I spend money at Target and don't even think twice about it.  I want it...I might wait for a few months, but more often than naught, I get it.  My children have everything they need and pretty much everything they want.  I am missing the point!!!

Katie Davis says in her book "I have stepped out of my reliance on God to meet my needs.  I "miss" Jesus.  He hasn't disappeared, of course, but I feel so far from Him because my life is actually functioning without Him.  By "functioning" I mean that if I am sick, I go to the drugstore or to the doctor.  If I am hungry, I go to the grocery store.  I keep forgetting to ask God first to heal me, to fill me, to guide me, to rejoice with me.  I have to set aside "time to pray" in the morning and at night instead of being in constant communication with Him.  In Uganda, because I was so "physically poor" I was completely dependent on God and spiritually as wealthy as ever." 

So, today,  I am asking God to help me to "get it".  I am a little afraid of how He might do that...I am afraid He might take away the comforts of my life, the things I hold so near and dear, the things I think I need.  But, you know what, I am more afraid that I am going to get to the end of my life and have missed the point of it all...loving God and loving others more than myself or my stuff.  Let me tell you, my friends, it is hard to not love your stuff....especially here in America where we have so much stuff!!!