CHOOSING NOT TO BE ORPHANS

Our Family-Thanksgiving 2010- Part of the Orphanless Family of God
(From top left to right: Jeremy, Bryson, Allison, Ben, Larry, Callie, Emily, Leslie,Eli, Jan, Joel)

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him because He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” John 14:16-19

So then, if good behavior can’t fill us with peace, what can? Is there anything? Jesus made it abundantly clear in His Sermon on the Mount that things cannot. Even when moths don’t corrupt or thieves don’t break in and steal, we find ourselves plagued by an irrepressible hunger to have more and more and a nagging itch to have better and better stuff. Neither can human relationships fulfill us and bring us peace. Even the really wonderful ones—the matches seemingly “made in Heaven”—are really only as good as frail humanity. They are all doomed to disappoint us sometimes; no one can fill our multi-faceted needs.

There are no things that can fulfill us and bring us peace, but there is a Someone who can: the precious inheritance Jesus left us when He went back to His Father—His Spirit. We can either welcome Him and allow Him to fill and thereby use these vessels, or shun Him by ignoring Him and thereby refuse to let Him use us. John 3:8 describes Him as a wind that blows wherever it wants. We can chase this wind and follow His call, or we can insist that He follow where we want to go and do what we want to do.

Until we are following His lead and being useful to God, we will never find peaceful fulfillment. We might be stuffed to the brim with something. We might be rich in things and constantly busy, but we will feel empty, and life will seem meaningless.

From Still on the Wheel, hopeful sequel to Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel ( Xulon, Jan Doke, 2009)