Fun in the Son…Freedom with Christ
So, if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:36, NIV)
July 1st, 2022
REFUEL: ONE LIFE
I wonder, are you a half-empty or half-full type of peep? I was thinking about this because half a year is behind us now while the other half looms largely before all of us. It stopped me in my tracks actually. For some of us, the half-year, that to me, just vanished, didn’t go silently and without its own kicking and screaming. What a year 2022 already has been! I glance ahead at the calendar though and I don’t know that I feel the best is yet to come. I anticipate but also dread the remaining six months I think in the same fashion I did the previous six months. Ahead for me is a one-year anniversary for my marriage but also for the passing of my precious daddy. Ahead for me is planting new memories and vines and flowers (our landscaping isn’t completed yet at our new home). Also ahead is the laying to rest of fifty-five years of anticipating Autumn with my dad. We plant in one season, and we bury in the next. It’s those fresh moments when we open our eyes first thing of a morning before the remembrance of yesterday clots our vision. I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted. The first six months of 2022 have worn me out, from the ticking of the time bomb in our nation to the scarcity of formula and the shocking war obliterating humanity in the Ukraine to the unimaginable and impossible reality which is ours today in this society we can no longer afford, from escalating grocery costs to exorbitant fuel prices to inflation at an roaring high. We can’t afford to live or die right now, sadly it seems.
So how do we refill? Lately, I remind myself of a vessel that was once designed to be a carrier of the very heart of God—His love and grace for mankind. I fear all the cracks and fractures forming in me, the smattering of the toll life is taking on my vessel, is leaving me with Christ leaking out, draining away. But then I thought about it and realized that isn’t such a bad thing! We weren’t created to keep Him to ourselves, but to give Him away, rather, to a hurting and lost world. I can be a carrier of His grace, but the broken pieces in me might just be what He can use the most, places where He can be seen in my otherwise tough exterior, fissures He can shine through. However, we cannot give away what we do not have inside to give, so we must take time to refill our vessels so we have something we can lend, extend, proffer.
What does that mean for you? Maybe you need an extra rest, a vacation, maybe it’s a good book or a weekend with family. Maybe it’s a hike or a picnic or nobody around you at all. Is it a shopping trip with a girlfriend or a date night with your ‘other’ or a sleepover with the grambabies? A workout? Getting away and spending time alone with just Jesus? Catching up with an old friend? Maybe it is camping, or for some even, glamping! Whatever it is, take some time this month to do so. We have One Life, that’s all, and before the rest of 2022 slides down the drain, let’s live it in a manner worthy of our highest calling…which, by the way, is carrying God’s great love for mankind to those who don’t know Him or who haven’t yet experienced Him to perceive He is good and faithful.
Ephesians 3:20, ‘Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energizes you.’ (TPT)
Out of all the living things God made, He created mankind to BE. Whatever, whoever, you are, Beautiful You, BE the best version of you; BE the change this world needs; BE filled; BE free!
