Those who know me know this one thing … I am a chocoholic. I LOVE chocolate, but not just any old chocolate, decent quality chocolate. Eating poor quality chocolate to me is the equivalent of a eating a spoonful of garden dirt. Life is too short to eat poor quality chocolate.

I went to a chocolate café some years ago with my family as a treat. This place had free samples of their lovely buttons of chocolate available to consume, which is my idea of Heaven. We decided to indulge in some morning tea and ordered a chocolate fondue – a bowl of molten milk chocolate with a variety of sweet delights available for us to dip into this gooey concoction.

When it arrived at our table my bottomless-pitted eldest son declared that this would be nowhere near enough goodies to feed us all … but despite our best efforts we could not finish all the ingredients supplied. We tried so hard but each of us got to the point that if we ate one more thing we felt as though we would be physically ill.

This experience caused me to question “Can there be too much of a good thing?”

This chocolate was good, the ingredients amazing but too much made us feel sick. The sun gives us vitamin D which is good for our well being, but too much sun burns our skin. Rain is good for the gardens and drinking water supplies but too much can be a devastating force to reckon with. Exercise is good for the body but too much can cause injury and damage. Medicine can cause healing, too much can have the opposite effect. Food is necessary for survival, too much is a problem. Sleep is vital for sustained energy but too much can make you feel sluggish.

Too much work damages close relationships, too much play means necessary tasks do not get accomplished. It seems with everything in life the key is balance and moderation.

King Solomon was a very wise person and his pearls of wisdom can be read in a number of places in the Bible. One of his more famous passages is from a funnily named book called Ecclesiastes and in the first few verses of chapter 3 he identifies that there is an ebb and flow for all things in life. As you read through you recognize a rhythm and balance that is associated with common things we experience and have been happening to humans for a very long time.

After reading the wisdom of Solomon will I ever over indulge in chocolate again? Probably. I will, however, remember that there may also need to be times of less chocolate to restore balance. All this talk of chocolate, however, is tempting me to make time to revisit that café!

Be blessed.