Embracing the Emptiness

As I talked with my friend yesterday, she mentioned how she does not want to fill her days with more activity while waiting on God. She knows while this may help keep her mind busy, eventually her focus will be pulled from God and His timing to her desires and her timing instead. I too have struggled with this this past year. I too have realized that it is so important to learn to embrace the time we wait on God’s will instead of busying ourselves so we don’t have to look at our emptiness and grow. Growing is such a beautiful gift, but in the midst of stretching, growing can be very painful.

Just today I read an Advent meditation in which was titled ‘Do We Fill Empty Places To Avoid God?’ It said, “We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. We want to fill up what is empty. Perhaps our fear is that an empty space means that something may happen to us that we cannot predict, that is new, that leads us to a place we might not want to go. I might not want to hear what God has to say.”

Um… do I want to hear what God has to say? Yes, most defiantly! But then I look at this past year, at this past month really… While I ultimately desire nothing but His will, sometimes the waiting can be so painful. Sometimes we don’t want to stretch any more. Sometimes we wish God would just ‘grant us our wishes’ since we’ve already grown some! But that is not how God works and THANK GOD FOR THAT!!! God is not some magic genie in a bottle just waiting for us to rub the lamp so He can grant us our wishes. While He places the desires of our heart in us, these desires are to be used to ultimately glorify Him. He should be my focus instead of my focus being on my desires! As I talked to my friend last night, it reminded me that too often I start to shift my focus on my desires (b/c I know they are from God) instead of Him and His will and timing.

Which brings me back to this emptiness question. In our time of ‘waiting’ we are forced to either stare at our emptiness and let God dance around and perfect our souls, or fill this emptiness with activity and tell God ‘thanks but no thanks’... Aw, I love the image of God dancing around the emptiness of my soul, knowing what needs work and what needs A LOT of work!!! I can see His beautiful smile and hear His sweet song. So while waiting is hard, while looking at my emptiness stretches me more than I want sometimes, my beautiful Savior ushers me forward to embrace more… more of Him and more from this life He has given me. So I sit here looking at my beautiful life, at my wholeness and then looking at my emptiness. I will choose to embrace them all; for I know God is in each one!