Plates and Steak

After staying here for 3 years, I finally had my take of Applebee's. Thanks to Bro. Keith and Sis. Ludy Leonin from the GNC.

I went to order a steak, but constrained by a budget (despite the additional gift card), I ordered one that was in the middle price range compared to the other steaks. The table next to mine and my girlfriend's had their orders ready ahead of ours, and so I look at the scrumptous steak that beheld one of the guys at that table.

Finally, my own steak arrived, and just to sum it up, I didn't like my steak. It had some spicy, Mexican flavor to it. Not that I despise their food or their culture, Mexican food is just not my thing.

One lesson I learned over the New Year is that we tend to minimize the Lord's provision when we look at other people's plates. To be honest there was no way I would have wanted my steak, but hey, I still had steak. I can still eat at Applebee's. Or that I can even still eat out.

We tend to minimize ourselves by looking at people who's plates seemingly have more, but we tend to minimize others when we see that they have an empty plate, or when we see that our steak is better than theirs.

But come to think about it: not everyone wants steak. And so the Lord blesses us differently because we prefer one thing over another, and our preferences are different from others. There are times, however, that we prefer steak and we get fillet mignon, or tuna, or baby back ribs instead. Why is this so?

Because the Lord is such a gracious God, He will never give us anything that will harm us, nor would be less than perfect for us. In our humanity, we see things with our short-sightedness - we think we know what would be better for us more than He does. In His infinite knowledge, He is the one that really knows what's best for us, and so He blesses us accordingly.

If this seems hard to understand, or even hard to accept, just think about a bad time in your life that eventually worked out; then looking back, you realized one of the following:

1. "That seemed really hard but it did work out for the better"
2. "I did not just get out of my situation, but I got a lot more than I expected"...or
3. "It's good that it happened - I learned my lesson and now I know what to do better."

We have this idea that the Lord owes us things we think we deserve. When this comes to mind, and you start looking at other's plates, just think about this: do you actually just want to eat steak everytime? Or burgers? Or pasta?

The Lord is really an abundant and gracious God who lets us enjoy the variety of His richness and kindness, and blesses us according to what's best for us.