Any Less

Note: In the past I've had people casually read this and totally misunderstand the message I was trying to convey. This poem was written while working at a minimum wage job in a deli in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where I worked with mostly women, many of whom were very poor and struggling to take care of children on the very small wages paid by our employment. I watched these women, many the same ages as my own daughters, on several occasions, have to take verbal and emotional abuse, bite their tongues, then go into the back and cry. I started to write this one day after watching a snowbird couple bitterly complain about their cheese thickness to a young woman and then later as I was leaving, seeing that couple get in their brand new Ford F-350 with an 'I Love Jesus' front license plate. I had intended it to be an angry editorial on the hypocrisy of many so called 'Christians', but before I had completed it the Lord spoke very strongly to me and if you read it all the way through will realize that it became something entirely different.

It’s easy to love Jesus

when you drive a brand new

F-350 diesel,

while vacationing

for the winter in your

100 thousand dollar RV

in Gulf Shores, Alabama,

taking charter bus

trips to Biloxi

for a night at

the casinos;

easy when you live

in middle-class America,

surrounded by all your

healthy, happy children

and plump,

giggling grandchildren,

with your body free

from pain,

not twisted and grotesque

by diseases like aids and cancer,

not panting and short of breath

from clogged arteries to the heart,

because you have

health insurance and can afford

the best medical treatment

available,

with all the specialists and

bypass surgeries money can buy;

yes, it is easy then.

not so easy,

when you go through life

worried and afraid,

worried about feeding your children,

worried about providing a shelter

over their heads,

worried about the lump

growing on your child’s arm,

unable to get it tested,

because you have

no health insurance,

praying for the strength

to get through

one more day,

as you go to your

low paying job,

where America’s elite

treat you like a hired servant,

because they have money

and drive diesel powered F-350s,

with ‘I Love Jesus’ on the

front license plate

and you don’t;

some day we will all

be the same,

standing before a holy

and righteous God,

and I wonder how they

will answer then,

when they see themselves

speaking with derision and disgust

to the person working

for minimum wage,

because their cheese was sliced

a millimeter thicker

than requested,

or because they had to wait

more than 5 minutes

in the checkout line,

I wonder who will be blessed then,

I wonder if their

diesel powered F-350s

with the ‘I Love Jesus’

front license plates

will mean anything then;

then He speaks to me;

reminding me

that He walked this earth

with nothing,

in spite of being the King

to whom everything belongs,

that He endured

humiliation and torment

without ever once complaining

or hating,

that even though

He was the greatest,

He became the servant of many,

laying down his life for all,

paying a cost only

He could pay,

doing the will of the Father

despite the suffering and pain,

giving us the example

to be followed,

proving that He loves us all

unconditionally and without favor,

even those who drive

brand new F-350s

with ‘I Love Jesus’

front license plates;

and He asks me;

“Is the servant greater than the master?”

as I quietly (and humbly) think to myself;

should I do any less?

.

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