I open the refrigerator and stare into it, not wanting what it offers. I pace to the cabinets, open them, and stare into them the same way. I close the doors and go back to the refrigerator and start a new staring contest and then cycle back to the cabinets.
I am wanting a cheeseburger and the frig nor the cabinets holds the ingredients. I know that I could, if I chose, climb into my car and go through a drive-thru, but I don’t.
Instead I think about how the cabinets are always full, and I’m always wanting something else. Spoiled, my parents would say. And I am.
I read Emily Freeman’s book, “a million little ways,” and I am thinking about the way God has made me. How so often I’ve painted myself as other than I am because I didn’t like who God made me to be. I didn’t like being sensitive. I didn’t like thinking deep things about God that nobody else was thinking, and as much as I wanted to be used by God, I didn’t really want to use my difference to be salt and light. Instead I let myself be romanced and wooed by the world.
As I stare into the cabinets I think about this piece I’ve just read by Ann Voskamp called, “The Real Truth about ‘Boring Men and the Women who Live with Them” and how it paints a true picture of my husband. I see how blessed I am to have him. I hesitate to say I have been a faithful woman, because so often I’ve gone to the window, looked out, and wondered what it would be like to be married to someone else or no one at all, dreaming of something else, something more.
Here stands Christ, every day in my cabinet, in my mirror, in my being, in my husband, and in so many ways, I reject him, and hunger for what the world has to offer.
He promises me that today is a new day to begin again, to start fresh, to be made new. In this moment, I press in, I lean harder, I bend lower. He says He is doing a new thing, that I’ve got to do the hard work of meeting myself again, and while I’ve been heartsick for a foreign land, I’ve not done the hard work of telling myself and the world around me that we are greedy and often malnourished, filling ourselves with food, people, and things that will never satisfy.
So listen: Only Christ will ever truly satisfy.
Perhaps our hunger is meant to drive us to the One who can fill us and satisfy us.
Perhaps our full cabinets should not leave us wanting more or something different, but are intended to drive us to give our good gifts to those who are truly hungry and have nothing.
Maybe when we look in the mirror, “our hunger to be known is a God-given appetite for more of God” (Ann Voskamp).
Maybe our desires for greener pastures are really a desire to know the Good Shepherd more than we do. An invitation for Him to make us lie down, to lead us beside still waters, to restore our very souls, to lead us in path of righteousness. For when we are with Him, we never want.
In fact He prepares a table for us. He says, “Come. Eat with me. Eat of me. For I am the bread, the water, the wine, the only feast you need.” This – this is the only way to experience true peace, dining with the Prince of Peace.
And while we are filling ourselves with His goodness, He says, “Go. Feed the hungry, the lost, the sick, the afraid, for the fields are white for harvest.”
photo credit: castgen via photopin cc
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