Be the Cup

OK, I'm not one for silly analogies. I think most of the emails I get with cute object lessons are like a mental whipping. But something hit me last week in Mexico, It was a large bat shaped object when someone mistook me for a pinata. Not really, I avoided a Funniest Home Video moment but just barely.

What actually hit me was a thought. A real, bona fide, mental type of thought.

Israel (a person) was trying to put ice in a cooler filled with 12 and 16 oz. water bottles.
There was no room so he took out some of the bottles. Kind of defeats the point I thought.
Then he took some more out and I thought "we're really missing the point here." But as I didn't have a better idea I went with it.
After he poured a whole bag of ice in the cooler and some of the chunks (pieces? What else do you call small ice particles? Sleet? They weren't that small.) After the chunks of ice fell thru the gaps between the bottles like hail in a forest, Israel was able to put a few of the water bottles which had been set aside back in. "Good" I thought!
But they all wouldn't fit back in, even after we shook it a little hoping to create more room. Ever shake a container of ice water? it doesn't cooperate quite nicely.

When we arrived at our location to work with children the cooler had been jostling around as we drove over washboard roads and I was able to get the rest of the bottles on the cooler.

THAT'S when I had a thought. It was as if God Himself said, "Sometimes I have to take people out of the way to do my work." I realised that to minister to the world we need to be as refreshing to the soul as cold water is to the body on a scorching day. Adding the ice to the cooler made those bottles more refreshing. The Holy Spirit working in His people makes them more refreshing. SOme folks are in the way of that, so God sets them aside, temporarily, and enfuses the others. Then as they stand aside and see what God is doing they, hopefully, will be ready to be put back in and be chilled with the rest of the body.

OK, so here's me, I've got some pain in some of my joints that makes life a wee bit difficult. My focus had been to do my job and carry my weight and get thru the day. That wasn't God's focus. His focus was that I "be the cup of water" for others.

Then I was ready, and I like to think I was replugged into the group so that I could be refreshing to others.