Save the Bones For Grandpa

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” – Luke 16:10

It’s funny how a simple household chore can evoke such pleasant memories.

Without fail, whenever I buy and dismantle a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, I can hear my mother’s voice saying, “Save the bones for Grandpa.”

She wasn’t being mean. 😂 Gramps loved cleaning every last bit of meat from the bones. Apparently, I inherited the gene because every time I attack a rotisserie chicken, I enjoy doing the same thing.

Growing up, we didn’t waste much of anything. I remember one Thanksgiving when a close relative watched in horror as his wife threw away the turkey bones. “My mother could have fed us for a week from those bones!” he exclaimed. He wasn’t wrong.

Beyond the pleasant memories and nostalgia, there is something deeply satisfying about recognizing and capturing the remaining value in the “bones” of our lives. 

Mom and Grandpa taught me to look twice at what everyone else thought was finished. Jesus is teaching me to do the same with the ordinary moments of my life. Sometimes, while standing at the kitchen counter picking through the remains of a rotisserie chicken, I sense the Lord’s presence and pleasure in a surprisingly profound way.

These are chicken bones! Who cares?

Apparently, God does.

As apprentices of Jesus, we are learning how to steward everything entrusted to us. There are no responsibilities too small, no moments too ordinary, and no acts of faithfulness too insignificant to escape His notice.

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’” –  Matthew 25:21

Perhaps faithfulness usually looks less dramatic than we imagine.

It may be found in a promise kept, a dish washed, a dollar managed wisely, an encouraging word offered, or a chicken picked clean before the bones are discarded.

These ordinary responsibilities become part of our everyday apprenticeship to Jesus. Nothing offered to Him in love is wasted.

We are being trained to carry His goodness faithfully, both now and in the coming Kingdom. The reward is not merely greater responsibility someday. The reward begins now as we learn to share in the Master’s joy.

Each day gives us another opportunity to establish a pattern of trustworthiness in the activities of daily living.

It is more than a test. It is an invitation to learn from the best and experience the quiet joy of a job well done, a responsibility faithfully handled, or a day well lived.

Each day brings us a collection of ordinary responsibilities, unnoticed opportunities, and seemingly insignificant moments.

They may not look like much.

Sometimes they look like chicken bones.

But Grandpa understood something I am still learning: there may be more goodness left than we think.

Jesus is teaching us to look again, waste less, love well, and discover the joy of faithfulness in the smallest things.

Run the play: Be faithful with the bones. There may be more Kingdom in them than you think.

Finding Our Place in the Story

What ordinary responsibility or overlooked “scrap” in your life might God be inviting you to see differently and steward more faithfully?