In case you haven’t noticed yet, I am someone who needs a visual. You know, a concrete picture that helps get my head around an abstract truth.
Big Gulp in a little cup. The famous Big Gulp drink that you get at 7Eleven. Huge. The seemingly never ending beverage. Now picture a small, child sized cup sitting next to it. The little cup looks pathetic in comparison. Imagine taking that Big Gulp cup full of a refreshing drink and pouring it into that tiny cup. Seem ridiculous? Yep. But consider the concept….
God and all He is, is our Big Gulp. Our endless source of thirst-quenching refreshment. And here we are, the measly little styrofoam cup. Little and empty. And what does God offer? To pour into our lives and fill them with Himself – the never-ending source. But it is an offer that we must accept. We have the right to choose to remain empty. We have the ability to say I only want a little bit, or enough to the point where I feel my cup is full. We can put a lid over our lives and say, “That’s enough.” But why? Why, when He offers to fill us to overflowing every day of our lives? How could we desire any less?
But the overflowing is not just for our own benefit and enjoyment. Imagine now that there are other empty cups placed closely around our cups. Those people whom we share life with, the ones we allow close enough to be affected by our lives. As He pours into us and as we overflow, those cups receive splashes of what flows out of us. They experience the puddles of the spillover. And it makes them thirsty, too. They want some of that refreshing drink within them….
If not for the Big Gulp, my little cup remains empty. Try as I might to conjure up something to fill me up on my own, it will only be empty air. I need the Source. The unending, ever-fluid Source. Pouring, filling, refreshing.
I love the thought that the more of us who open our cups and ask for a refill “to overflowing, please” the more splashes and puddles we make in our homes, our communities, our world. A holy mess. A glorious spill.
John 7:37-38 -“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
