Humorous Devotional

I worked hard on this article, but when I got to the writing challenge submission area at FaithWriters it was closed for this week's challenge, "Write in the Devotional Genre." This has never happened to me before. The number submissions allowed in any given week is 200. Normally they are well under at closing on Thursday morning. I was dissappointed.

But I thought since I have not posted in a long while I might just as well copy it in here. Hope you enjoy. The title is:

Take Shoulders

You know how when you articulate a word over and over it starts to sound strange? Well something similar happened to me one Sunday sitting in church, only it wasn’t a word, it was a body part. Because my husband and I were sitting toward the back of the room I could see lots of them.

For reasons I can't explain - the sermon wasn’t boring or anything - people's shoulders began to manifest themselves to me in a pronounced way. I think it was the shape. The more I contemplated them, the odder they seemed. I mean, here’s this globe head, after that a stem; and then these square lumps we call shoulders just jutted right on out there.

I speculated. “Hmmm… wonder why God made shoulders? Well, let's see." They’re good to hang purse straps from, or as a place to pin corsages. To prevent jackets sliding off?” But what else?“I know! Shoulders are great proof humans didn’t evolve.  But then I realized evolutionists would claim apes had pre-shoulders or something. I argued with imaginary scientists.

“Pre-shoulders, according to your way of reasoning, would only develop into actual shoulders only for species survival. Like apes with weapons on their backs might tend to develop shoulders. But why would apes bear weapons? ” That silenced them: they had no answer.

“Well, does God talk about shoulders in the Bible?” this time I interrogated me. (Really, the sermon was good that Sunday. I planned to do a word study when I got home.

From Strong I learned the English word shoulder or shoulders appears 61 times in the Bible: 55, OT, twice, NT. Mostly shoulders had a negative connotation: they had to work too hard, they were belligerent, or somebody was sacrificing those of animals. A few times God was removing something from them and that was usually good.

Jesting aside, the shoulder fixation did get me thinking how God sometimes uses unorthodox methods of getting my attention. He works in strange ways or maybe He works with strange people, but I sensed Him telling me shoulders have spiritual implications in need of personal enlightenment.

“How do I use my spiritual shoulders then,” I asked? My word-study scriptures resonated.

When the Lord is trying to get my attention, do I “refuse to hearken, and pull away the shoulder, and stop my ears, that I should not hear?” (Zechariah 7:11) Do my thoughts drift aimlessly in prayer or quiet time? (Does my mind wander in church?)“

Are my shoulders pillows of comfort, or do I “thrust with side and with shoulder, and push all the diseased with my horns, till I have scattered them abroad?” as I just read in Ezekiel. Have my thoughtless words ever run anyone off from church?

Do I “shoulder in” on private matters that don’t concern me? Gossip?

Do I “bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but I myself will not move them with one of my fingers? Or do I “bear another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ?” Do I raise the bar for my friends, lower it for me? Do I want them to be there for me, but I’m too busy when they have a need?

Because I’m such a ‘strong Christian’ do I with pride carry my own burdens, or do I lay them on Jesus wide shoulders, “casting all my cares on Him, because He cares for me?” Do I toss and turn and worry, or give my problem to Him and leave it there?

And for my last but not least question: do I point lost folk to Jesus that He might shoulder their burden of sin?

“For what man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.” (Luke 15:4-6)

On second thought I take back that was my last. I have one more. Are you a bizarre person like me? If so, you might be willing to pursue my line of reasoning by asking a question of your own:

“To what use have I put my shoulders lately?”