3 Ways to Fill Your Emptiness With God’s Goodness
We were just starting to believe we’d made it through the worst of the blustery winter days when the cold weather returned like a tempest fighting for one last victory. The daffodils are now wilted under the weight of the late winter snow. It seems God’s goodness has up and left the premises.
The yellow blossoms that seemed to promise sunshine and hope a week ago have lost their first battle.
Sometimes the worst kind of defeat is the kind that comes the day after you thought you’d made it through the storm.
Somehow, despite the disappointment of more cold weather, something about the whiteness of the world feels holy this morning. I let the daffodils rest under the weight of the snow and seek refuge inside. Meanwhile, the whitewashed world outside the window speaks of a silent kind of waiting.
What are you waiting for?
I feel like we’re all waiting for spring together. Waiting for warmth. Waiting for redemption. We sense there must be more, and so we stand firm and keep waiting.
The snow and the buds that sprouted too early remind me of the emptiness that sometimes comes late in the day. The darkness of a world turned from the Light sits in blackness, and we find ourselves empty and longing for more.
The darkness of a world turned from the Light sits in blackness, and we find ourselves empty and longing for more. #emptiness #Godsgoodness Click To TweetWe long for greater fulfillment from our jobs, greater joy in our days, more satisfaction in our accomplishments, and deeper union in our relationships. Even when life is relatively purposeful, joyful, and complete, there’s still a deep ache for something greater.
Maybe we’re longing to encounter God’s goodness.
Brennan Manning once wrote these words: “We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
Looking at the fields, I consider these things, and I consider the reality that this very spot might just be holy ground.
What if we don’t need to wait for the burning bush to encounter God?
What if he’s here, in this moment with the fields and the daffodils – in this place with the longing and searching?
Here’s the radical truth: God is everywhere. All the time. He is with us while we wait. He is with us when our senses tell us otherwise. God will never leave us.
So how do we actually encounter God’s goodness in a way that fills us? Here are three suggestions:
1. Encounter God’s goodness by digging into his life-giving Word.
Jesus prayed these words in the garden before he went to the cross: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).
We’re all walking around with a longing for heaven that won’t be fulfilled until we get there, but we don’t have to wait for heaven to embrace the eternal life we receive when we come to the cross. Eternal life is knowing God – more and more and more – right now, in this life.
We step into eternal life the moment we become followers of Jesus, and eternal life is more than a ticket to heaven. Eternal life is the privilege of knowing God in this life.
We come to know God when we dig into his written Word. We read, memorize, and study. God reveals his heart to us, and he meets us in that place.
2. Encounter God’s goodness by pausing to let him speak into your circumstances.
God longs to speak to us in a million different ways. He speaks in the purity of the late-winter snowfall. His voice calls from within the daffodils that rose too soon. We find him in the child who gazes across the room with a smile and in the wave from a friend.
He is always present. He is always calling you to pause and glance in his direction. Whether you walk through the valley or find yourself on a mountaintop, pause to ask what he is doing in your midst, and he will often speak quietly to your soul.
3. Encounter God’s goodness by basking in his created world.
God is always creating. We don’t have to return to the words of the creation story in Genesis 1 to encounter God’s creation. Find a window and look to the sky. The heavens are declaring the glory of God.
Watch the slow shift of the seasonal change. Take ten minutes to walk around the block, sit on the front step, or let your feet feel the cool grass beneath you on a summer evening. You will touch a piece of God’s created work. You will touch God’s goodness.
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As for me, on this snowy morning, I sit with little Caleb by the window. I open to Psalms, reading aloud as we watch for birds at the feeder. He presses his little eyelids shut with a grimace like he’s fighting to keep them closed. He folds his hands in a mishmash of tangled fingers and lets me read the whole Psalm.
We bask in God’s love for us and count all the ways we’ve encountered his love today. There’s no doubting it: We’re standing on holy ground.
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Calling All Mothers and Daughters!
Lastly, in addition to writing to adults, I am also passionate about ministering to the next generation.
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