EMPTY?

Lately, a fragment of an old hymn has been stuck in my thoughts looping in my head: "Bring your empty earthen vessels…come you needy one and all." EMPTY! Have you ever just felt empty? Drained. Nothing in the tank to run on. Nothing in the account to draw from? Nothing in the jug to pour out. Have you ever honestly admitted, "I feel so empty"? It's not a good feeling. When one is empty, he does not feel he can take on one more task much less do what is already required of him. When one is empty, he cannot enjoy what he should enjoy. When one is empty, he cannot engage others in a meaningful way. Strangely, when one is empty, he pours out on others anger, frustration, and venom. He is so full of his emptiness that it spills over in all he says and does. The oxymoron is intended--full of emptiness. I marvel at how one can feel so empty and yet be so full of hurt, bitterness, disappointment, depression. There are things that can turn your life and heart upside down and drain you of your dreams, delights, desires, and even your determinations. An empty heart is like an empty wallet. You have a bill to pay, someone's need you want to meet, and offering you want to give, but the wallet's empty. There is nothing there to pay the bill, meet a need, give an offering. You have the desire. You want to do right. You want to be helpful. You're just empty. That's one kind of emptiness. The kind where you still have the want to, the desire to, you just have nothing to. A worse kind of emptiness is an ennui emptiness. (Ennui is the word the Church Fathers used to describe a spiritual condition.) This is an emptiness so empty there is no want to, no desire to, remaining. You've lost all enthusiasm and even interest. The pond is not only empty of water, the mud of its bed is all dried up and cracked too. The tank was empty, you’ve been running on fumes and, now, even the fumes are all gone. Emptiness inescapably feels like worthlessness. Your life has served no purpose. You've made no difference. Emptiness also feels like one is on the back slope of his life's zenith, sliding downwards. Emptiness feels like one has come to the end of his usefulness, his influence. his life—even if he is young. All that said, perhaps, being empty isn't all bad. You cannot fill something already full. If you are empty, you are, for example, in better shape than the one full of himself, full of his own ways. As I customarily do—a practice that, I’m sure, can be faulted--I have gone to great lengths to describe a problem for which I will in short length offer a solution. Yet, think of this justifying analogy: You or your doctor can enumerate a long list of symptoms of what ails you. The answer to all those symptoms can be expressed with one word--the name of the remedying medication to be prescribed. To all our emptiness there is one answer. Jesus. He is the only One who can fill that emptiness. At the start of His ministry when Jesus attended a wedding, He said of the vessels whose emptiness was causing quite the upset and perplexity, "Fill them…". So, despite the danger of oversimplifying, to those who know, feel, and are living the emptiness I described above, let me just quote a little more of the fragment of the earworm song stuck in my head: HE WILL FILL your heart today to overflowing, As the Lord commandeth you, “Bring your vessels, not a few.” HE WILL fill your heart today to overflowing With the Holy Ghost and pow’r. And, now, let me just conclude with this wish/prayer of Paul's as recorded in Scripture. Now the God of hope FILL you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. (Rom 15:13) That is a prayer we can take as a promise. Empty? The God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing so you will no longer be empty but overflow with hope as you burst with the fullness of the Holy Spirit's empowerment. Maybe being empty is not so bad after all. It allows you to be filled. ---Pastor Clifford Hurst