Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Serve

Serve

Is your mug

half empty

or

half full?

That is the question…

Or is it?

Don’t get me wrong, it is a question worth exploring. However, making a definitive choice as to whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, a risk taker or a passive player in life, might get in the way of seeing, well, the mug.

Isaiah 64.8
⁸ Yet, O Holy One, you are our God;
   we are the clay, and you are our potter;
   we are all the work of your hand.

Whether we are half full or half empty, spilling over or run dry, we are shaped by God’s creative action, not for destruction but into something of worth.

John 4.10

¹⁰Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’

God’s desire is to fill all of us with living water. What is needed from us is to simply make ourselves available.

John 2.1-10

The Wedding at Cana

2On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ ⁴And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ ⁵His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ ⁶Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. ⁹When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’

Some days we are half full. Other days we are half empty. But everyday we exist in the image of a God who longs to fill us up. The wonder of the transformation God brings about in our lives is that, like good wine, it continues to improve with age. God is not absent from us. God is with us, filling us up with grace and mercy and above all, love.

The thing about what is inside our mugs is that it must be shared to be appreciated and understood. We must give to it to others to drink for it to be fully enjoyed.

So, as you reach for that mug or cup or whatever it is you are drinking from, consider this…

that God has shaped you as an empty cup, has filled you with living water and is transforming you into something beautiful…

Have a great weekend.