Your Plate

Whether it’s a super seafood buffet, an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant, or a good ol’ dinner on the grounds Baptist Sunday, we love us some eating. One of my major downfalls is Shoney’s breakfast buffets...just can’t be around all that unguarded bacon. All those settings are similar in that there’s usually a stack of plates, and silverware at the head of the serving table. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve anxiously grabbed a plate(or two), filled it up, and hurried to sit down and devour my overfilled plate, only to find that I’d completely forgotten any spoon, knife, or fork, so eager was I to fill my plate. Another aspect about the smorgasbord settings is small children have to have their plates filled for them. Conscientious parents lead their little ones through the process, making sure some semblance of nutrition is attained. Otherwise they’d probably head straight to the dessert offerings!

Christians, when asked to serve in this capacity or that, like to use the phrase, "my plate’s pretty full already," in an effort to avoid the requested servitude. The question we need to ask ourselves periodically is this: who filled your plate? Who put all those items on your schedule, now limiting how you think you can serve God? Were you like me at the buffet line, piling on everything that looked delicious, while avoiding things that I perceived I wouldn’t like? There are certainly some areas of service that I enjoy more than others, so those are what I’d like on my plate...

In Luke 18:17, Jesus says:
"Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven"

While we usually think of this passage in terms of turning our lives over to Christ, being childlike in what service we involve ourselves in should also be in order. We need to be like the child at the buffet line, allowing the Father to fill our plates with what He’d want us to have. Along with filling our plates ourselves with the things we’d like to do, oftentimes we allow others to fill our plates. We accept responsibilities for the wrong reasons: peer pressure, guilt, or trying to prove our worth as Christians. God’s desire is for us to have a loving relationship with Him. As such, we should hand Him our plates, let him both place on it what He desires for our lives, and remove from it what’s cluttering up our ability to serve Him completely.

So, the next time you’re thinking or saying "my plate’s full," assess the situation completely... who filled your plate?