God is Our Portion… Share. Serving. Piece.
When we think about the word portion, we think about something allocated to us. It’s a part of a whole, divided among a few or many. And if you have kids, you know that a portion is often disputed.
“His piece of cake is bigger than mine!”
“Her chores are harder than mine!”
“My room is smaller than his!”
Yes, we have trouble with portion sizes, even as adults. What makes us struggle like that? What makes us buck against our portion, whether it’s a portion of finances, of food, of resources, or of work? Many things to be sure, but perhaps one of the things driving that resistance is our sense of entitlement. It’s the idea that we deserve more or deserve less, depending on what’s being portioned out. In either case, the amount of our portion is somehow unfair.
This is at least a part of what’s at the core of Psalm 73. It’s a psalm of struggle; a song of complaint against the perceived unfairness of what the psalmist saw playing out before him. Asaph, the writer of the psalm, looked around and saw that the wicked were prospering. Not only were there no apparent consequences to their actions; it seemed as though their circumstances were continually improving. In contrast, he looked to the lives of the faithful and saw difficulty, suffering, and hardship. But he could not reconcile the portion of each.
That was, until he gained the kind of perspective that only comes when one enters into the presence of God. And having done that, Asaph had an eternal bent on his perspective, and that’s when we get the mighty declaration of the psalm – that for the people of faith…
God is Our Portion!
This is a grace-fueled kind of contentment – one that comes when we stop comparing our portion sizes of stuff to that of others and instead remember that through Jesus, we can have the greatest portion of all. Only through Him does our portion become…God.
When our portion is small, we might feel like we deserve more. And when our portion is large, we no longer feel that we have a need for God. We replace Him with lesser portions over and over again.
In either case, whether we have much or whether we have little – we must come back to the truth that God is our portion. Whether big or small, the earthly portions we have been allocated are all too vulnerable. But thank God for Jesus who has secured something better and longer-lasting for us in Him.
He has secured our portion in God. Think about it.
So, What’s The Play Call?
- Are you grateful for things that God has blessed you with thus far?
- When was there a time when you showed even a small level of ungratefulness towards things that God has given you?
- When life’s portions feel unfair, how will you remind yourself that God as your portion is more than enough?
