A Devotional Thought - Overflow


I've been reading a book lately called "The Me I Want to Be" by John Ortberg. Honestly, I'm not even sure how I came across the book. If I'm not mistaken, someone on Google Plus mentioned free books in the Google Play store, and recommended this book in particular. Free just so happens to be my favorite flavor, so how could I pass up the opportunity? Simply put, I couldn't pass it up. But I digress, in this book, Ortberg recalls a story of when his son was three years old. One particular day his son was consumed with a desire to pour his own glass of milk. Knowing full well that small child + gallon of milk = disaster, Ortberg's wife tells him "no". But the three year old persists, how could a mother deny such determination? Ortberg describes how the child's small hands clench the large gallon carton of milk, and milk comes gushing forth. By some miracle, every last drop falls into the glass. This cup is filled to the brim, but the child had stopped just in time. John and Nancy Ortberg are taken aback, having been so sure that the boy would have spilled. In that moment, the boy excitedly swings the glass of milk, and the overflow ensues.

Ortberg continues to say that when we get bumped into in our daily lives, what pours out of us tends to reveal what is truly on the inside of us. This got me thinking... Everyone is filled to the brim in some ways. We all contain ideals, emotions, virtues, values and ways of life that differ from those of everyone else. I think this is why we see no success in trying to change someone's way of life. We're already filled to the top, and as mentioned in James Cameron's Avatar  "it's hard to fill a cup that is already full." I think a lot of the time, these inner workings of our heart become taken for granted. We become so accustom to feeling the way we feel, or thinking the way we think, that sometimes these things fall somewhere in our subconscious, only rising to our attention when something significant happens.

I know several times in my life I've had to stop and ask myself things like "Am I feeling joyful today? Am I living the victorious life? The pure life? A life of confidence?" and often when I ask myself these things, the answer, when left to my own conscious devices, lies somewhere in what I feel to be a gray area. But I think Ortberg is onto something here. As Proverbs 27:19 states, "Just as water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man." Although sometimes we get so settled into our lives it's hard to tell what we're feeling, I think that as Ortberg alludes, when something comes along and disrupts, or unsettles our lives, we tend to see some overflow. And in that spilling over of the cups of our identities, we begin to be able to observe what is truly within us.

When something comes along and unsettles my comfortable life, how do I respond? Do I respond in fear, confusion, anxiety, anger, etc.? In other words, is the overflow of my life a negative response? Or do I respond with joy, comfort, faithfully in the blessed assurance that I belong to the Most High, and nothing can change that? Am I content in the fact that although I see a disruption in my life, the world will continue to turn, the grass to grow, and the sun to shine? Is my overflow a positive response? The way we naturally respond to things seem to be a direct reflection of the deep parts of our heart. While at face value I can seem to be one way, when my life gets really disrupted, when my cup gets shaken, are the contents that get poured out the same? Or are they in fact much different from the outside?



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