Mud Pies or Holiday at Sea?

Who doesn’t love summer? The pool, bike rides, evening runs, washing the car, playing in the sandbox, summer rains, and then after that… playing in the mud.

Male or female, kids especially, love playing in MUD after a good rain storm. My kiddos and I stood in the lake the other day and dug deep down into the mud, gathering the goopy, messy stuff to make a “creation” on the dock.

We made a few seaweed palm trees and several drip castles around them. It was truly a village of muck. Now this was quite obviously not THE most sanitary afternoon activity, as it got under our fingernails and we all smelled like fish!! Of course one of my girls threw the mud at the other and my son wiped his dirty hands on my back. By the end of that 40 minute muddy extravaganza, we had all forgotten that our focus was to create the village.

We just wanted to get CLEAN. But that’s what happens when we play in the mud… right?

I can’t help but think about how as adults our lives tend to consist of “playing in the mud,” which results in us getting dirty and smelly.  And it most definitely saddens God as we choose to sit in gross stuff and even throw it at each other before we look to Him for satisfaction.

Instead, we dig deep and reach out for piles of mud – or people to fulfill us, jobs to build our reputation, kids and pets to be the “best in show.” But the consequence is that we get dirty and smelly; we become distracted with ourselves and our stuff, and our hearts are far from God. We become so distracted with the mess of our distracted lives that we forget our original God-given heart.

C.S. Lewis said it best:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Oh how I want a heart that seeks joy from the true source. How I want my hands to be messy from playing and working for Him and not from my own selfish ruin.

I’m praying our hearts would desire God first… today and in these days to come!

Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever” (Psalms‬ ‭73‬:‭25-26).

Blessings,

Libby‬