Empty

My friend had a dream.  In her dream she opened her wallet and it was empty.  Everything in her wallet was gone.  There were no credit or debit cards.  Her driver's license was missing.  There were no coffee shop stamp cards.  Her money was gone.  Nothing.  Everything was missing.  After she told me about her dream I thought about it quite a bit.  I wanted to analyze it...to interpret it.  I wondered what it could mean.  Did it really mean something or was it just one of those dreams we have and then forget about later?  Was the meaning about watch the spending--give it all away--fear of not having enough?

I am not sure if it meant any of those things.

But what I do know and what God whispered in my ear is that He wants us stripped free of all earthly things.  He wants us not bound to anything--not money, not the security of a debit or credit card, not the hope of a free coffee after getting our ten stamps, not to our family, not our past purchases or lists of things to get done.  But stripped down to nothing--empty of the world's expectations, the world's standards and values and the worlds viewpoint of what we should hold close to us.  Empty so HE can fill us up.

And then God reminded me of a vision that I had around Christmas time.  I was driving through Skagit County on a cloudy, grey, rainy day.  The trees around me were stripped of all their green.  They looked dead.  They looked empty.  The world around me looked bleak and dead and depressing.  There were no flowers, but dead blooms that needed pruning. The bushes were bare limbed plants.  And it was December--just weeks away from celebrating the birth of Jesus--the promise of eternal life.  The promise of a forgiven life.  A promise of light and new life.

And I looked around and I saw no evidence of new life--no promise of green or sun or new growth.  But God reminded me that He chose this time of the year for Jesus to be born---He was born at night, in a barn when the trees were bare and the air was cold and the skies were grey.  A time when the flowers were dead and absent. The only way to really know this promise is to empty ourselves and free ourselves of the world and all the things that hold us to what we deem important.

Where we want things to be in place--to know that we have what we "need"--to want to always have fresh flowers, to have green leaves on the branches--God doesn't see our lives like that.  He says empty yourselves.  When things seem dead and desolate, this is where God does His best work in us.

When the skies are dark
When the trees seem dead,
When there are no fresh flowers.
When no one if present.
When all seems stripped away.
And our reserves are empty.

God gives us life.
God gives us His life.
His Son.
His hope.
Himself.

Empty ourselves
so He can fill us up.