Words! They’re probably the greatest of the gifts I’ve received and the one carrying the most longevity. My affinity with words likely began with my mom always reading stories to me as a little tyke. I quickly memorized all the fairy tales that were a part of childhood in the 1940s. When school took over most of my waking time, I delved deeper into words, became an ace speller, and read countless books. My reading interest waned a bit in high school, but I replaced that with a keen desire to write, to express myself through my own words rather than those shared by others.

As a young adult, writing took a back seat for a time while I invested myself in other gifts with which I have been blessed, not the least of these being motherhood. But the kids grew up and flew the proverbial nest, health issues made most of my other endeavors difficult, so I returned to writing, and it’s been a blessing to utilize words again. It’s easy to understand, then, that my eye latched onto some devotional books, published by Guideposts, that are completely built around using a single word each day as their theme and building a devotional reading from that lonely little word.

Two of the books are Pray A Word A Day, I & II, and they contain 365 entries each for a total of 730. The other two deal specifically with Hope and Strength, each containing 100 devotionals, all for a total of 930 words. That seems like a lot of words around which to build faith-based articles, but when one considers the number of words in our American English vocabulary, it’s really not. And you’d be surprised how the human imagination can wrap a very ordinary word like “do” or “yell” or “bind” into a meaningful life lesson. It doesn’t necessarily require a complex word to make an important point.

One word that recently caught my eye was morsel. By definition, it is a small serving of an appetizing food or a scrap of something such as news or advice. It derives from Old French (small bite or portion), which comes from the Latin expression, morsus (a bite).

One type of morsel that I am particularly fond of is dark chocolate. Without a morsel of its richness on a regular basis, I would feel deprived of something very special. But the more I think of the word morsel, it begins to carry much greater weight.

The devotion that inspired my interest told of a person who was referred to by a caring relative as a “precious morsel.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that moniker until she began to see it in different terms.

The more I thought about being a precious morsel, the more I understood that’s all I really want to be. A bit of love. A sliver of wisdom. A scrap of joy. A thread of encouragement. Little acts that in the Lord’s faithful hands become precious morsels that go down so sweet.

If I can daily remember to sprinkle love on those I encounter, pass along traces of wisdom accumulated over my many years, tear a scrap of joy from the fabric of my life and share it, weave a delicate thread of encouragement into the concerns of a friend or stranger, along with countless other delectable morsels, perhaps I can spin a tapestry of daily living that make someone else’s day a little brighter. When we all do our very best to scatter small seeds of goodness, God smiles!

You, Lord, are a big God who delights in small things.