LOVE | March 16 - 22

It’s all about buckets. There is a popular children’s story often used in school classrooms to teach the power of empathy, kindness, and compassion. When our bucket is full, we feel awesome. When our bucket is empty, we feel awful. Our goal is to have a full bucket (obviously) and become bucket-fillers, helping others achieve their goal as well.

The metaphor can be stretched a thousand ways for better or worse, but my confession is that in my deep longing to feel love, bucket management became a full-time gig. I was good at collecting buckets from different sources – obsessively monitoring why some were empty, hyper-attentive to the balance of filling and receiving, protecting some from getting knocked over, desperately trying to patch up ones with holes, etc. I also felt responsible for making sure that the buckets of those around me were never lacking. I was sure that if I could just get a handle on the system, one day there would be enough leftover for myself. But the math just wasn’t mathing.

If love is a commodity, then sure, the best we can do is patch up our hole-y buckets and try to find some reliable sources. But in the Kingdom of God, love is not a resource and there is no economy of scarcity. Love is the whole thing. It is the entire picture. As Romans 8 says, to be separated from it is an impossibility.

There came day that Jesus showed me the futility of my strenuous, all-consuming preoccupation with managing buckets. I had essentially been sitting on a life raft, dipping my buckets into the source of love while anxiously trying to collect and protect all that I could handle. Meanwhile, I sat inches away from a vast, unending, all-encompassing ocean of love. More than enough. Waves of mercy and grace for every moment. 

So, Jesus invited me to give up my life raft. If I was willing to give up the relative safety and comfort of my horribly deficient system, divine love would rescue me. I confess that I was profoundly afraid that if I let go, not only would I find God’s love lacking, but I would have lost all my tools of self-sufficiency for procuring it. 

But here’s the truth, in my surrender to Love, love abundant has been found. And I never want to see another bucket again.

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READ

Slowly read through the passages offered. How do they relate to the reflection? What is Spirit revealing through them?

Romans 8:31-39

REFLECT

Invite the Holy Spirit into your reflections and welcome the voice of Jesus to help you answer these questions.

1.  How have I been living as if there is not enough love?

2.  What unhealthy attachments do I have to the limitations being revealed?

Acknowledge and process this with Jesus and ask him to help you release that attachment.

RESPOND

Using the guided prompts, take time to respond in confession. In repentance how can you turn towards God and others?

Choose a new way.

Jesus, I confess that I have been trying to operate out of my own resource of love and choose instead to live in dependence on your provision.

I resist the lie that limitations are curses and choose instead to receive them as means of grace to bring me closer to you.

RECEIVE

Take time to listen to the voice of Jesus and receive his mercy and grace. Help open my eyes to see how you are providing love in my life?

Thank you, Jesus, for your provision.

FAST

As a way of living into your repentance and resisting the idea of scarcity of love, this week consider fasting from one of the unhealthy attachments to you identified above and practice instead paying attention to God’s gifts of love.