Chips and Morsels

Tuesday 11/26/19 3:45 AM

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and, coincidentally, also my birthday week. Thoughts of cramming potatoes, gravy, turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and birthday cake down my throat with family and friends invade my brain. The airwaves and internet remind me of deals that are to be made on Black Friday and Cyber Monday so I can accumulate more and more and more and better and better and better and more and more and more and better and better and better.

Thanksgiving is later this year you know. There are less than three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we need to start our consuming and amassing of gifts even earlier this year. Get those decorations up! Time’s a wasting!

My devotional theme this week is Christ the King. Surely a king would enjoy the sumptuous feast and beautiful things that will be consumed and purchased this week. Kings are measured by their opulent lifestyle and their profligacy: the bigger, the more extravagant, the gaudier the better. What king would turn down an opportunity to feast and flaunt his wealth at a time like this?

Then I turned the page of my devotional book and read this poem by James Russell Lowell.

His Throne Is with the Outcast

I followed where they led,

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head

The King I sought for meekly stood;

A naked hungry child

Clung round his gracious knee,

And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled

To bless the smile that set him free;

New miracles I saw his presence do,

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor,

The gathered chips into a woodpile grew

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store.

I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek.

His throne is with the outcast and the meek.

My previous thoughts were arrested, arraigned, tried, and convicted.

Why am I so easily held captive by the desires that never satisfy? Why am I always looking for more, and better, unsatisfied with what I have?

But then the gracious King reminded me that I am the naked child, hungry for love, who has found a knee on which to cling. I am the slave, hunted by cravings that will never satisfy, who has been freed from bondage by a loving smile of forgiveness. Gathered chips are the fuel for the flame he uses to warm my cold heart at a fire stoked from his growing woodpile. Broken morsels are the food he uses to nourish me at a bountiful table stocked from his goodly store.

Lord, keep me from being lured by the glitz and the glamour so prevalent during this time of the year as I celebrate your goodness to me. Give me your compassionate heart and your forgiving grace as I interact with those around me. Use the meager chips and morsels of my life to somehow provide hope, love, and justice for those abandoned by our society but loved by you, the outcast and the meek.