If all goes as planned, I will NOT be going shopping today. I do not enjoy fighting the crowds for bargains, most of which I can get online anyway. And I already have plenty of stuff, so I don’t really need anything. I still have some gifts to purchase for others, but I plan to spend the day with family celebrating my youngest grandchild’s birthday.

Someone sent this story to me years ago. I don’t know the origin or the author, but I think it makes a great point:

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.  During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups – porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: “Notice that all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups. The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything that they have. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. And enjoy your hot chocolate.

Luke 12:15 “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

Jesus said that. He didn’t put us here so we could have lots of stuff. He put us here to live, to have life.

John 10:10  “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

That full life is what we get through a faith relationship with the one who lived and died and rose again to obtain our forgiveness and secure our salvation. For His sake, we have the certainty of life everlasting.

John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

When you have Jesus in your life, it changes your perspective on everything. And it makes the “hot chocolate” even better.