Sweet Water

Sweet Water

Proverbs 27:19 “As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the person.”

A couple of Sunday’s ago I visited a church in Duluth and the Pastor shared this analogy from Joni Eareckson Tada. We are like empty pitchers and as we go through life our pitchers start to get filled up. They get filled up with bitter water or sweet water. Life is a series of bumps and other people will bump us. What spills out is either bitter water or sweet water. The natural tendency when bitter water spills out is to blame the suffering to blame the bump, to blame the person. In doing so we keep filling our pitcher with bitter water. Things keep bumping us, we say we got an unfair shake. When we blame the bumps we are completely missing the point. For bumps will come and what spills out of us is enlightening of what is really in our heart.

This really hit home for me and I was embarrassed to think of the things that have spilled out of me when I have hit the bumps in my life. I was convicted thinking of how many times I have blamed the bump for the bitter water that has spilled out of me. Even the little bumps in life. How have I reacted to my family when they rub me the wrong way. The same with friends or coworkers, other drivers. I think about the person who has served me in restaurants or has waited on me in a store. When things don’t go the way I want them to or think they should, what has spilled out of my pitcher?

Over the past couple of weeks this message of the pitcher keeps replaying in my mind. I have been making an effort to really watch what is filling my pitcher. To control what thoughts I am letting play out in my mind. To not dwell on the negative. I have been trying to live out Philippians 4:8.9 “Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you.” Is it easy? Have I been entirely successful? All I can say is I am very glad my life is not part of a reality T.V. show open for the whole world to see.

Lord I pray that you help me and help us to fill our hearts with good things from you. That you will fill us with sweet water. I pray that as the bumps do come that we do not place blame. That sweet water will pour out and that our hearts will reflect not only us but you.

The Tin Man

Matthew 24:12 “Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.”

I read an e-mail recently and this quote from C.S. Lewis was on the bottom of the page; “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” 


The quote reminded me of the story of the Tin Man from the “Land of Oz books, by L. Frank Braum, (The Wizard of Oz). The Tin Man was originally a man named Nick Chopper a woodsman who is in love with a young munchkin girl named Nimee Amee. They plan to be married but an old woman that Nimee works for does not want to lose her. She pays a witch to curse Nick’s ax. The ax is cursed and as Nick is working cutting down trees to build a life for him and Nimee his ax begins to cause accidents. After each accident Nick looses body parts one by one. A tinsmith replaces his body parts with tin. He finally has an accident that injures his heart and the tinsmith patches him up but without a heart. With each accident Nick would lose a part of himself. He would find himself separating more and more from Nimee. Until finally he forgets about Nimee, he is no longer able to love. He loses Nimee, his heart has been replaced by tin.

“The love of many will grow cold.” All of us know that loving does hurt, we do get hurt and sometimes we get deeply wounded. It feels like a knife or and ax has opened a gaping wound leaving us exposed and bleeding. We can be like the tin man and put on armor becoming less and less human. We can build up walls that no one will ever again penetrate. We can turn to our work and look only to the next task in front of us, forgetting our dreams and what we are working toward. Our hearts will become, “unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

God looks at our hearts, 1 Samuel 16:7 “As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the person.” Proverbs 27:19 Solomon said Give me an understanding heart 1 Kings 3:9  “Light shines on the godly, and joy on those whose hearts are right.” Psalm 97:11 Five hundred and seventy verses talk about our heart in the Bible, we must be vulnerable we cannot let our hearts grow cold.