Plates

I've noticed lately that my everyday dinner plates are looking kind of rough: several are chipped, and the paint is looking worn and faded.  As I've started considering an upgrade, I remembered a study I'd heard about relating the size of your plate to the amount you eat.  This is a link to a fascinating article on the topic.

The bottom line is that the same amount of food looks smaller when served on a larger plate.  Especially telling is that even when people were specifically tasked with serving the same amount into different sized dishes, they consistently over-served when using the larger dishes, showing how strong and unconscious this bias is.  Combined with the fact that American-made dinner plates have grown some 23 percent since the 1950s, it's little wonder that we're all getting heavier!  I'll definitely be looking for some smaller plates when the time comes.

All this musing about plates naturally turned my mind to offering plates and from there to church pledge campaigns, since many churches (my own included!) have their pledge in-gatherings in the Fall.  So what bearing might this plate-size business have on our perceptions of generosity when we are giving to God through our local church?

At first thought, it might seem that we all would recognize how abundantly God has blessed us and thus see ourselves as having "plates" filled to overflowing with God's generous provisions.  From that sense of abundance we would then readily and joyfully give a heaping helping to the church, confident we'd still be left with more than enough for ourselves.  The truth, however, is that  the rich communities in which so many of us live comprise a vast enormous plate on which our individual blessings often seem tiny and small....

Seeing our portion on such an unrealistically large plate makes it harder to give.  The total of what we have feels small on the "big plate" of the lifestyles around us: a mere pea on a platter.  It makes us less inclined to give generously, because we feel poor by comparison even in our extraordinary wealth!

The answer then is to get yourself a new "plate" on which serve up your blessings.  Like the more-than adequate servings that fit on a smaller dinner plate, we need to evaluate the abundance of God's provision against a more appropriate backdrop.  We need to see the circumstances of our lives on a smaller plate, in order to more readily and easily share what's on that plate with others.

Rather than comparing ourselves to the rich and famous as shown in news and entertainment and to observations of our neighbors, instead we need to consider the whole range of the human condition - around the world and throughout time.  And instead of focusing only on the "stuff" we have, we also need to remember all the intangibles - family, friends, church community, health, faith, well-being, the beauty of creation, the wonder that God made you and loves you!  All the money in the world won't fill a plate the way these things can.

With the confidence of knowing our plate is full, our generosity is more easily released.  We just need to know how to look at things.  What aspects of your life do you need to look at differently in order to recognize how abundantly God has provided for you?  Can you share more of that abundance with your church?