Share and Share Alike
Week Sixteen | Fifty-Two 4.24.21
MINE. It’s a universal four letter word that rumbles out of every single toddler’s mouth, not once but thousands of times. If you’re a parent ~ or for that matter, if you’re around little people in any form or fashion, you also know that this one word can unleash a power struggle complete with hurricane force screams, cries, and tantrums (of course, by the toddler not the adult).
And so we, the grown ups, begin to patiently teach our precious one the art of sharing.
The good,
the hard,
the reward,
and the cost
of what it means to let go and share with those around us.
All the while, we (the big people) are really just preaching to ourselves. Because let’s be honest, we tend to resort to our all-about-me days more often than we like to admit.
~ When she’s shining in the spotlight, despite your long, hidden hours of the passionate work that helped make that light shine bright …
MINE
~ When he gets the promotion, though your talent and commitment far surpass …
MINE
~ When she has one thousand likes in a matter of seconds, and you just keep showing up with your fish and loaves and twelve hearts …
MINE
~ When he hears the praise of his peers every day, while you’re covered up alone in diapers, laundry, school books, meal prep, and teachable moments …
MINE
When they have
the life, the marriage, the job, the opportunity, the talent, the friends, the influence that you’ve always dreamed of, worked for, prayed for.
And instead of celebrating and enjoying the grace of God *with them, we find ourselves complaining and clinching our fists at them. Maybe, even at God.
In 1 Samuel 30, David and his men return to find their city burned and their women and children taken captive. So he gathers his men for battle, to take back what rightly belongs to them. Of the six hundred men, two hundred stay behind because they were simply too exhausted to fight.
Fast forward to victory, and this group of left-behind men standing to cheer and welcome their battle brothers home.
But when they see their exhausted companions waving them in, a few of the weary soldiers have a little melt-down.
“But some [troublemakers] said, ‘They didn’t go with us, so they can’t have any of the plunder we recovered.’
But David said, ‘No...Don’t be selfish with what the Lord has given us.
We share and share alike - those who go to battle and those who guard the baggage.”
David was a man after God’s own heart, despite his own tight-fisted blunders. This shepherd boy-turned-king was deeply familiar with sidelining shadows. But oh the secrets he knew when it came to defeating giants and leading warriors.
I believe one of them may have been this:
Share and share alike.
Because whether you’re
in the battle or with the baggage,
on the stage or behind the scenes,
praised by all or (better) loved by few,
successful at much or faithful with little…
We are the human race
and
we really are on the same team.
And as followers of Christ, we are one body.
With one aim…
To know God and to make Him known.
So go ahead, share and share some more.
Cheer and cheer with all your trusting-scared heart.
No matter who you are, what you’ve done, or what you have (or don’t).
No matter who they are, what they’ve done, or what they have (or don’t).
It all counts when your hope is set on Him.
And it’s the only way to truly be free ... of me. For the glory of the One who has
shared and shared alike, His unrestrained love for us.