A little bit of bread…

“Give me neither proverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.”
 {Proverbs 30:8b-9}

It’s that time of year again. It’s the Christmas Season…Layaway items are being paid off, kids [and some adults] are writing Santa Clause letters-cutting up pictures from the sale papers so he will have a visual of what it is they want; and parents are feeling guilty because they haven’t been able to purchase everything that their son or daughter has asked for. This time of year that is typically reserved for family, food and fellowship to celebrate a gift given to all of us thousands of years ago, has been turned into a fiasco of Credit Cards and greed.

It’s around this time of year that I get more frustrated about finances than usual. You see, I am a gift-giver at heart. I would rather go shop and buy things for people that I love and care about than I would receive something for myself. I would love to be able to go out and purchase some tiny little something for all of my friends and family, just because I feel good giving to others. I would love to be able to sponsor 5 or 6 kids from the Angel Tree every year. I would love to be able to drop some extra money in the “Birthday Gift for Jesus” offering plate on Sundays. I would love to be able to go out and buy cute little trinkets and figurines to decorate my house with during the Christmas season. Make it look like Santa’s workshop exploded in our living room. I would love to go out and buy all of the ingredients needed to make cake and cookies and candy for our friends and church family. But I can’t.

And I tend to become frustrated about that. Especially during the holidays.

We have been studying the book of Proverbs in Sunday school, and the verse above was one we read this past Sunday. God himself could have just walked in the room and looked at me and said,

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