Once upon a time, I asked God how to find balance in my life. He gave me a vision of a tipped pitcher.
And after meditation on it, it’s pretty easy to understand why. 🙂
Think of the water as the Holy Spirit, or your energy, or whatever is similar that serves you.
If you hold the pitcher completely upright under a faucet of running water, the pitcher will eventually spill. This feels like a mistake. The water is wasted. There is no purpose served. You have to clean it up.
If you hold the pitcher completely horizontal, so it’s only pouring out (not receiving water), eventually the pitcher will run dry. There will be no more water in the pitcher, and the pitcher will not be replenished.
A tipped pitcher, however, both receives water in — AND pours water out.
And the water will go out at the same rate that the faucet pours it in.
There’s a lot of talk about self-care these days, and there is tension for Christians here. Because while it is true that “you can’t pour from an empty cup,” as the saying goes, we are also called to “spend (our)selves” (Isaiah 58:10) on behalf of others.
The answer to this tension lies with the Tipped Pitcher.
The pitcher has to be pretty full before it is able to pour out. It is a terrific object lesson; I encourage you to grab a pitcher or a measuring cup and actually try this for yourselves under a faucet. See just how full the pitcher has to be before it starts pouring out!
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) (emphasis added)
When Jesus said His yoke was easy and His burden light (Matthew 11:30), He meant it! We are to spend ourselves — yes. We are to love others as we love ourselves — absolutely. But this spending, this loving is in light of the comfort, blessing, love — energy!! — we receive from God our Father.
Because God is so good, He also ordained rest times for us too. And those days are just as holy, sacred, set apart as the days in which we serve others. (Exodus 20:11, Dt. 5:12, Jeremiah 17:24, Ezekiel 20:20) We are supposed to pour from tipped pitchers, not horizontal ones.
Make Level Paths 