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.