Tonight I stood in my pantry and stared at the shelves. Stared in my fridge and freezer, too, really hungry. I went through a mental list of every bit of food to my name, trying different combinations in my head and wondering what on earth to make for dinner. Everything I could think of needed an extra ingredient that I didn’t have. Fight traffic and go to the store? Or improvise? I wasn’t in the mood for traffic, so I crushed some Ritz crackers, grabbed eggs, spices, and my frozen chicken, along with fresh green beans and some penne pasta, garlic, olive oil… Nothing super fancy, just your standard breaded chicken, obligatory vegetable, and the carbs… but I was pretty proud of myself at the end. I spent no extra money and used what I had to create something good.
That ordeal reminded me of Scrabble, which I’ve been playing lately. Us Scrabble nerds understand the “do what you can with what you have” idea. (I swear there’s this phenomenon where whoever gets the Q won’t see a U for the whole game. And I can't count how many times I’ve been stuck with all three evils...Q, X, and Z. Awesome if you can use them on a triple letter, but if it’s down to the end and that’s all you’ve got left…)
Anyway. Just seven letters to work with, and if you’re playing on a certain site online, you’re only given two minutes to make a word. The computer won’t listen to your whines (“I have a Q but no U!”); it’ll just skip you. You have to do what you can with what you have.
I think this applies to life as well. Maybe God is asking us to do something, and we’ll make excuses… “She’s the one with that gift, God. I can’t do that…” “I’ll give money/time when I actually have some to spare.” Such a wrong view of thinking!
Besides that, it’s tempting, and maybe natural to our humanness, to compare ourselves to other people. It’s been a constant prayer of mine that I would be freed from that. I really think it grieves God’s heart, first of all. Whether my comparison is in my favor or in the other person’s (putting them down or putting myself down), my evaluation of His handiwork is faulty. And His dream for my life, His vision of how I fit into His plan for the world, is not the same as the one he has for someone else. Whatever gifts, talents, abilities, and responsibilities he’s given to others is none of my concern. I’m called to be a faithful steward of what He’s given me…not compare and complain. Think about the three servants in Matthew 25, each given a certain amount of money. The master commends the first two, saying, “You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.” But the third one acts in fear, not knowing the true heart of his master, and what he has is taken away. And what about that second guy? He didn't freak out, "Hey, you gave the first guy ten talents and you only gave me five?" He did what he could with what he had and was blessed.
Perhaps if we stop lamenting that we're not adequate, maybe we'll actually be able to hear God ask us like he asked Moses, "What's that in your hand?" ("What's that in your pantry/fridge/freezer?" "What letters do you have?") It's when we dare to do what we can with what we have that the mishmash of ingredients turns into an actual meal and that random group of letters becomes a brilliant, never-saw-that-coming word. It's then that our "little" becomes "much", and things start to happen. Big things, too, like teenage shepherds killing giants with a stone or nations being set free.
This isn't a call to put confidence in self. It's a call to trust that God knows what He's doing, to take responsibility for what He's given us or placed in our hearts to do, and then do it.
