I am not really a toast kind of girl.  Being Southern, and having women in my family who could make mouth-watering biscuits, I much prefer those. My waistline, however, made the determination years ago that toast is my breakfast bread, and I have learned to live with it.

Eating toast at home, I stick to no butter, and only jelly/jam.  A few days ago I was dismayed to find my jelly jar almost empty, and my toast was hot and waiting.  I scraped out what I could, and smeared it on.  The result?  Awful! Toast with just enough jam to barely taste is offensive.  The hint of flavor makes you frustrated, and longing for more.  And I learned something…things spread too thin are useless.  The toast would have been better without it.

I believe God used this to remind me of something I desperately needed to hear right now.  PEOPLE spread too thin are also not doing a whole lot of good…and sometimes it can even been offensive!  There are some things that contribute to this that we have no control over – work hours, family, etc.  But in my case, and I suspect I am not alone, there are things that I CAN control.  Many times, I am guilty of overcommitting my own time, without any help from anyone else.  I love to do ministry, and saying no is hard for me even when I have no real time for anything else.  I love to write and yet I find myself not writing nearly as much as I thought I would because I am usually busy doing something else.

I have been guilty too many times of trying to do too much, and as the saying goes, not doing any of them too well. I have given people/ministries/my family the equivalent of my toast, and that’s not good. I have left them frustrated, and longing for more – of my efforts, or just more of me. My prayer is that God will “show” me a piece of toast every time I am tempted to overcommit myself, and that I will immediately stop!