I've heard this phrase many, many times before. It's in Hillsong's Desert Song. It was recently a facebook status of a friend, and I'm more than sure it's popped up elsewhere in my life too. This picture of how God's love never fails to fill us again and again has always inspired a sense of beauty and awe in me.
(Back story: I was trying to find if this phrase is specifically stated in Scripture, of which it is not, but apparently, the idea is supported by 2 Corinthians 3:18, 2 Timothy 2:21, and Psalm 23:5-6, and probs other places too.)
I'm finishing up The Reason For God, and in the last chapter, Tim Keller paints this really beautiful picture, depicting "the dance of God":
What does it mean, then, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit glorify one another?... The inner life of the triune God... is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other.
That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us. Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the other revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love... We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love.
While the picture of being "emptied to be filled; filled to be emptied" has always been beautiful, I don't think I really understood the full impact and significance of the phrase until I read that passage in The Reason For God. You see, I never really understood the "filled to be emptied" half. Whenever I thought of that half of the phrase, a different picture always appeared in my head, and indeed it was very self-centered, and indeed it tainted "the fabric of what God has made."Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made. pg. 223-227
I always saw and understood how God's love overflows into our lives, but I also always saw being emptied as something similar to being drained - ugh, I can only love people around me, because of this strength that God has provided me with, but I'm drained now; Father, fill me up again. Within my mindset, it didn't make sense - I'm... not filled with God's love so that I feel drained and exhausted, right...? Why am I filled to be emptied?
And ultimately, that's focused on me, my self. It's focused on how I can love other people - ah irony at its finest. And while it's something fairly obvious, it suddenly clicked that God gives his love to me whenever I am emptied, but I am emptied, because I am able to freely give this love away to others. So as I am emptied, I can be filled again by the Father, whose source of love is never quenched, and so the cycle continues. And it really is a beautiful picture, and the coolest part is that it's a beautiful picture that I have the opportunity to partake in.
But a part of me still feels the impact of my current struggle. On one hand, I see this image, and I rediscover the conviction to love for love's sake. To love because it is what God has called me to do. To love because He loved me first. But I equally vie for the full picture, where we, in community, are each orbiting around one another. Keller gives another example:
Imagine there is someone you admire more than anyone else in the world. You would do anything for him or her. Now imagine you discover that this person feels exactly the same about you, and you enter into either a lifetime friendship or a romantic relationship and marriage. Sound like heaven? Yes, because it comes from heaven - that is what God has known within himself but in depths and degrees that are infinite and unimaginable.
pg. 227And that part of me can't let go of the possible sadness, bitterness, and disappointment that comes with 'self-giving' love. I mean, I want the whole shebang. I want the mutual agreement to orbit around one another, and while I am reminded that I will always have that with the Trinity, for some reason, within this very moment, that isn't reassurance enough.
I understand that I should, as Keller describes, find joy in simply loving those around me. I equally understand that I should find only greater joy in discovering that that "person feels exactly the same about [me]" and not some twisted feeling of compensation paid or fulfillment of needs, because that's ultimately the Father's job, and it's already been done. But for some reason, I'm still wrestling to accept this truth in my heart.
Eunice recently ordered a book for me called The Inner Voice of Love (if you're reading this - thank you, again!! h0l1a @ u mang). It's a collection of short journal entries from Henri Nouwen, a well-known writer about the spiritual life, on understanding the full impact of God's love in the midst of the stormiest gales of our lives. The entry I read last night read:
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
You have to close yourself to the outside world so you can enter your own heart and the heart of God through your pain. God will send to you the people with whom you can share your anguish, who can lead you closer to the true source of love.It was a little uncanny as to how relevant and applicable this particular entry was to my current situation, but hey, our God is pretty great. I'm still not sure where I'm going with this or where I'll end up, but I do know that my God is faithful. All I can do is trust that He will fulfill His promises and trust in what He has called me to do in this life.
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Fill me up, Lord
Fill me up, Lord
Fill me up...
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Love of God
Overflow
Permeate
Oh my soul
haha you, my friend, are pretty eloquent yourself!
ReplyDeleteI am so encouraged by what you are learning from God. It seems so counter-instinctual, so easy to feel unjustified and unfulfilled. But I see you growing into someone who puts others before himself and that is just really, really cool!! That even though God has put struggles for you to overcome, your overcoming them is making you into someone more like him in image :)
Also, the idea of the trinity and the two revolving around the other reminds me of our Three Musketeer friendship -- I always knew there was a reason why us three worked so well together! ;)
as always, thanks for sharing.
Love,
Catherine