What are you Complaining About?

Got a gut check last Friday, and wanted to share what I took out of it.

Last Friday, I went to that great culinary mecca, a KFC/Taco Bell combo restaurant. Usually, I splurge on a Taco Bell $2 meal deal, but that particular Friday, I decided that I wanted to have chicken. So I ordered a 2 piece grilled chicken basket - leg and thigh, side, biscuit, drink.

When my food came out, I almost took it back. The thigh was this shriveled, undersized little mutant thing, and the drumstick was nowhere to be found. Upon further investigation, I discovered a dark little drummette hidden under the thigh. I was quite annoyed. Where are the sizeable portions to which I am accustomed? Don't they know this is Texas?!? Everything is bigger in Texas!

Not being one to complain - especially in fast food restaurants, where terrible things can happen to returned food - I took my scrawny thigh and my drummette, and I took them before the Lord in prayer. "Heavenly Father, I think you for this day, and for this beautiful weather with which you have blessed us. I ask you to bless this scrawny thigh and drummette to the ..."

WHAM! Quick kick to the gut! And then I hear it in the back of my mind...

Do you realize that you drove past more than a dozen other restaurants and fast food eateries in order to get to this location? And do you also realize that there are about thirty different menu options at just this restaurant alone? Do you understand that this is more meat than many of My children get to eat in a week? And do you have any idea how overwhelmingly skewed your viewpoint is to stick your nose up at this bounty that is ever available to you? I was flooded with the understanding of how absurd my complaints were, given the stark contrast of my minor inconvenience relative to the serious, life or death struggles faced by so many in this city, state, and world every day.

Needless to say, I felt rather foolish sitting and crying in the dining room of the KFC/Taco Bell. That quick little incomplete prayer has stuck with me since. I've been coming back to it a lot in the last few days. That thing that keeps bubbling to the surface is a question, but not the obvious question I would expect. The obvious question is "what are you going to do about it?", but I already know full well what the answer to that is supposed to be. But the question I keep struggling with is this: Why has God allowed such a disparity in assets to fester here in the first place? Why are some of us blessed with so much, and others given so little?

I believe that the answer to that is two-fold. First, there is so much more to be received from God than material blessings. There is nourishment that He provides that goes so far beyond chicken, or beef, or even bacon, as to be incomprehensible to those who have not received it. And His gifts go beyond just that - wisdom, love, mercy, compassion, understanding, forgiveness. Of the things that truly matter - His love, His mercy, and His salvation, we have all been blessed equally, if only we choose to accept it. The problem is that we miss His greatest gifts because we're all so hung up on the cheap(er) things of this earth, which we're allowed to borrow for a time.

And borrow it we do. We don't carry anything into the world with us, and we don't take anything when we depart. It is all on loan from Him during our brief stop over. In truth, we are not the owners of our things, but rather the stewards of His creation. And therein lies the second part of the answer. As the stewards of this earth, it is our God-given duty to be responsible stewards. It is up to us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, lift up the oppressed. And this is why He has lent us these resources - to complete the task that he is calling us toward.