You remember the line in the 23rd Psalm: “You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows” (NIV). Many of us still think first of the older King James Version, “my cup runneth over.” Have you ever considered what you might do with that overflow, with the excess, with the abundance of God’s Spirit, God’s gifts?
Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), Doctor of the Church and founder of 70 monasteries, had a suggestion worth considering:
“We must not give to others what we have received for ourselves; nor must we keep for ourselves that which we have received to spend on others…(Y)ou dissipate and lose what is your own, if without right intention and from some wrong motive, you hasten to outpour yourself on others when your own soul is only half filled.
“If you are wise therefore you will show yourself a reservoir and not a canal. For a canal pours out as fast as it takes in; but a reservoir waits till it is full before it overflows, and so communicates its surplus… We have all too few such reservoirs in the Church at present, though we have canals in plenty…. They (canals) desire to pour out when they themselves are not yet inpoured; they are readier to speak than to listen, eager to teach that which they do not know, and most anxious to exercise authority on others, although they have not learnt to rule themselves… Let the reservoir of which we spoke just now take pattern from the spring; for the spring does not form a stream or spread into a lake until it is brimful…. Be filled thyself; then, but discreetly, mind, pour out thy fullness…. Out of thy fullness help me if thou canst; and if not, spare thyself” (Sermons on the Song of Songs, from For All the Saints, Vol. III: Year 2, Frederick J. Schumacher, editor, [Delhi, NY: the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, 1995], pp. 187-8).
This is good advice, and from the 12th century! If we think of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit filling our lives until the fullness of the Spirit “runneth over,” perhaps we could divert this overflow into the lives of those around us and out into our communities.
At the beginning of this New Year, why not let God’s grace and Spirit flow into, through and out of your soul? Don’t dam up the reservoir about which Bernard speaks. Instead, allow for a spillway, so that the Spirit may more easily overflow, taking God’s blessings and God’s grace into the lives of others, through your witness.
Remember that God did not bless Abraham and Sarah with a blessing that stopped there. God said, instead, “I will bless you…and you will be a blessing…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12).
That is how we should see ourselves. God has blessed us, adopting us through Christ as his sons and daughters. This is not a gift we can grasp tightly to ourselves. God calls us to be a blessing to those around us, thus witnessing to God’s grace.
Go, be a blessing to someone. Spill the Holy Spirit all over them!
to buy vob to mkv at my estore
Posted by: Dafdault | 02/13/2012 at 12:18 AM