"A Baloney Sandwich" by Bob Benson

"You have come to share in the very being of God" 2nd Peter 1:4

Do you remember when they had old fashioned Sunday School picnics? I do. As I recall, it was back in the "Olden days", as my kids would say, back before they had air conditioning. They said, "We'll all meet at the Sycamore Lodge in Shelby Park at 4:30 on Saturday. You bring your supper and we'll furnish the iced tea.

But if you were like me, you came home at the last minute. When you got ready to pack your picnic, all you could find in the refrigerator was one piece of dried up baloney and just enough mustard at the bottom of the jar so you got it all over your knuckles trying to get to it. And just two slices of stale bread to go with it. So you made your baloney sandwich and wrapped it in an old brown bag and went to the picnic.

When it came time to eat, you sat at the end of a table and spread out your sandwich. But the folks who sat next to you brought a feast. The lady was a good cook and had worked hard all day to get ready for the picnic. And she had fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad and homemade rolls and sliced tomatoes and pickles and olives and celery. And two big homemade chocolate pies to top it off. That's what they spread out there next to you while you sat with your baloney sandwich.

But they said to you, "Why don't we just put it all together?""No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't even think of it," you murmured in embarrassment, with one eye on the chicken."Oh, come on, there's plenty of chicken and plenty of pie and plenty of everything. And we just love baloney sandwiches. Let's just put it all together." And so you did and there you sat, eating like a princess when you came like a pauper.

One day, it dawned on me that God has been saying just that sort of thing to me. "Why don't you take what you have and what you are, and I will take what I have and what I am, and we'll share it together?" I began to see that when I put what I had and was and am and hope to be with what He is, I had stumbled upon the bargain of a lifetime. I get to thinking sometimes, thinking of me sharing with God. When I think of how little I bring, and how much He brings and invites me to share, I know I should be shouting from the housetops, but I am so filled with awe and wonder that I can hardly speak. I know I don't have enough love or faith or grace or mercy or wisdom, but He does. He has all those things in abundance and He says, "Let's just put it all together."

Consecration, denial, sacrifice, commitment and crosses were all kind of hard words for me, until I saw them in the light of sharing. It isn't a case of me kicking in what I have because God is the biggest kid on the block and He wants it all for Himself. He is saying, "Everything I possess is available to you. Everything that I am and can be to a person, I will be to you."

When I think about it like that, it really amuses me to see somebody running along through life hanging on to their dumb bag with that stale baloney sandwich in it saying, "God's not going to get my sandwich! No sirree, this is mine!" Did you ever see anybody like that-so needy- just about half starved to death, yet hanging on for dear life. It's not that God wants your sandwich. The fact is you need His chicken!

Well, go ahead-eat your baloney sandwich, as long as you can. But when you can't stand its tastelessness or drabness any longer, when you get so tired of running your own life and doing it your way and figuring out the answers with no one to help, when trying to accumulate,hold,grasp and keep everything together in your own strength gets to be too big a load, when you begin to realize that by yourself you're never going to be able to fulfill your dreams, I hope you'll remember that it doesn't have to be that way.

You have been invited to something better, you know. You have been invited to share in the very being of God.