The other morning I went to make hot chocolate. Not the homemade kind. I gave up on that a few years ago when I accidentally confused condensed milk and evaporated milk and wound up with a concoction that tasted like burnt chalk. On my recent attempt, I used instant hot chocolate from a box.
In times past I’ve frowned on the from-a-box variety because it tastes too watered down and not chocolaty enough. Turns out, my mugs are on the large side and I should have measured the amount of water I used per packet of hot chocolate mix. Since I usually just eyeballed it I typically ended up with brown water.
This time I measured and the result were perfect: warm, foamy chocolaty goodness. The water-to-powder ratio was everything. That got me thinking about some other ratios I encounter, namely my God-to-life ratio.
Have you ever hurried your way through life only stopping here and there to offer up a one sentence prayer or spend a quick five minutes aimlessly paging your way through your Bible hoping to “hear from the Lord”?
If your life is anything like mine you are just plain busy, always cramming 15 things into a slot on your schedule that was really only made to hold five. Because of that you tend to skip or rush your quiet times, and squeeze God in whenever you can find five extra minutes—which is, like, almost never.
Then you wake up one morning realizing that your life is a mess—just like the brown water I’ve made on previous attempts at hot chocolate. Somewhere along the line you stopped measuring. Your life-to-God ratio is off. Without even thinking about it, your days have been crammed full of too much life and not enough God.
And when things go wrong, like they most certainly will, and freshly manicured nails break, rent checks bounce, boyfriends end relationships and friends begin ignoring you and not returning your calls you find yourself wanting to throw your hands up in the air and scream, What is going on here?
It’s in moments like this that I can picture God peeling back the floor of heaven and looking down on His irate and inconvenienced child and saying, “It’s about time you showed up. I’ve been sitting here waiting for days.”
With the holidays quickly approaching it seems like the pressure to get things done has tripled in my life. I’m sure your life is similar. There’s always more to do—finals, papers, projects. And more fun to be had—parties, family gatherings, and holiday traditions. And the temptation is stronger than ever to leave your Bible unopened and your prayers unsaid.
Before you do that, think of your life-to-God ratio. It’s the times when life is at its busiest that you need to spend the most time with God. Otherwise, you’ll soon find yourself with nothing but a lukewarm mug full of brown water.
Nobody wants to drink that.
“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I wait for Your words.”
–Psalm 119:47






















