Good morning…

Yesterday as a family, we donned disposable hair nets with plastic aprons and gloves to assemble meals for the homeless through Hosea Feed the Hungry. For the first year of this annual Christmas tradition, I left feeling badly about the gift we had given.

To me, the meals we served in styrofoam boxes felt unfair and inconsistent. We prepared the food as instructed, but some dinners had a mound of turkey while others had just one chicken drumstick, a skimpy filler until other turkey trays arrived. Some of the actual boxes were physically smaller, some bigger. Some meals had healthy servings of stuffing, green beans, and yams, while others had two scoops of rice and our compliance to “Go light on the last trays of beans.” Having just opening in our home the same number of gifts, worth about the same dollar amount for each family member, I felt bad about some styrofoam boxes being filled with ‘plenty’ and other Christmas dinners inevitably sparking ‘want.’

When I pointed out the discrepancy to Kelly, another volunteer who had brought her tall twin boys and their even taller friend, she said, “Oh, people will be happy to get a free meal, they won’t care what food is in their box.” My heart quietly disagreed.

As people, we are all prone to compare, whether we are homeless or live in a mansion. After receiving a gift, we immediately look around to see what everyone else got and how ‘ours’ measures up to ‘theirs.’ Often we judge ours as ‘less’ and theirs as ‘more,’ since the grass always looks greener on the far side of the fence. Coupling this natural human tendency with one boxed dinner clearly being much, much greener than the next, I felt like I was dishing up a huge helping of jealous disappointment.

I drove away from the experience unsettled, upset. Then as the day wore on, my ‘unsettled upset’ morphed into an ongoing prayer. “God, please perform a manna-like miracle for the recipients of the boxed dinners we prepared.” For the wilderness wanderers on the streets of Atlanta, my heart grew a hope. But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough. Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough. Each family had just what it needed (Exodus 16:18, NLT).

With God’s powerful provision, may we wake to awareness, “We all have just what we need.”

…Sue…