A Devotional Revelation

Overflowing Blessings (A Spiritual Reflection)

This morning I went to Transformation Network for morning devotions. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, how it was going to be. This week the guys were told that they needed to start presenting the devotions. The leader wasn’t expecting them to follow through. Fortunately, the guys proved him wrong.

J2 presented the devotion. He used Psalm 23. He made some good points. Then J1 pointed out something I had never noticed before. He reread the verse from the Psalm where David describes how God prepared a table in the presence of David’s enemies, and instead of being fearful or overwhelmed in that negative situation David looked at the cup and saw it overflowing.

That hit me so profoundly, especially given how things have been going for me these past couple months. Too many times I looked at the cup and contrary to my optimistic personality, I didn’t find the cup half full, I saw it much closer to empty. How does that happen?

I believe that answer is to be found in the first verse: The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything that I need. When I look at what I don’t have, when I focus on what I feel is missing, I find that the cup is looking pretty empty. But when I allow my eyes to focus on what is present the perspective is very, very different. I see the family and friends who have faithfully stuck by me through even the darkest of times. I look down and see the handy laptop computer on which I’m typing. There are so many people, so many things. My cup really is overflowing. I have everything I need and then some.

This Psalm is often read at funerals. So often, that it is unfortunately associated more with death than with living. I needed the reminder. My cup of blessings is overflowing. It doesn’t mean that everything is rosy. It doesn’t mean that I will like the way things are going. It does mean that as I look at my life, and the way things are going I’m going to choose to focus on what is present, not on what might be missing.

In some ways I really feel like I’ve been in a cycle. I am even more convinced that this move was the right thing to do. I’m not sure I would have come to this awareness when life was as easy as it was in Urbana. I had to move through the doubting and the loss to come to the perspective of blessing.

So, I wonder how Nelson will make this part of the journey. When he came home today, he informed me that he was going to have to look for a job. The house that we moved here for him to build has been officially put off until spring. Come next week, maybe even later this week, there isn’t any work needing to be done. He’s going to head over to Home Depot and put in an application. They’re building one here soon, too, so that may even be a possibility. His cup is feeling a bit depleted, but we both trust that we will have everything that we will need.