The Nature Of Hope: A 5-Day DevotionalНамуна

Chipmunk

He was stuff-stuff-stuffing his face. Frantically, while he looked about him, he crammed the seeds into his mouth as fast as he could.

I thought he was adorable.

Chipmunks have a remarkable ability to stuff their cheek pouches full of food. As the pouches expand horizontally, they give you a visual picture for the idiom “stuffing your face.” And their expanding cheeks serve dual purposes. They allow the the chipmunk to quickly gather food and serve as a suitcase for temporary storage and transport to a safe location.

So why do they need to stuff their cheeks, scurry about, and hide their food?

Because chipmunks live haunted by lack. They hibernate during the winter and unlike other mammals (bears, for example) that live off of their stored fat, chipmunks need to have food put away so they can periodically eat their stored cache throughout the winter.

While I find their overstuffed cheeks adorable and their hoarding habits admirable, it’s not so cute when humans do it.

My husband isn’t impressed when he can barely push the closet door open because it’s stuffed with too many clothes. The boxes of craft supplies (knitting, painting, jewelry making, fabric) that stuff our garage is not a testimony to my creativity, it’s a testimony of a scattered soul. When I stand at the refrigerator eating leftover lasagna when I’ve just eaten an hour ago, it isn’t about hunger, it’s about stuffing down my feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

These are just a few areas where I stuff, stuff, stuff my life to over-filled and overindulged. If you’re like me, it can leave you feeling somewhat shameful, pathetic, weak, and icky.

Most of us don’t stuff ourselves out of a sincere lack or need like the chipmunk—we stuff ourselves out of anxiety and dreams for the way we hope to live, instead of the way we are living now. We stuff and stuff out of fear that we will never have enough or be enough.

This is in direct contrast to Psalm 23:1, “The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.” Or, as the New International Version puts it: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

Like Eve in the garden, when we constantly focus on what we don’t have and what we erroneously believe will make our lives better, we fall prey to living with a haunting sense of lack, which leads to temptation and misery.

We want to live lives of purpose and meaning.

When we focus on God’s care and provision instead of stuffing our lives with the meaningless, we are on the right path. We have the right stuff.