Sometimes life just drains you dry. Before you know it you’re an old dry used up sponge sitting in the bucket, basically worthless. You don’t hold any water – it just runs right through. That’s what happens when life eats at you, when you get ‘holes’ in you that are too big to be useful.
I’ve been that. Lots of ‘life’ has taken it out of me bite by bite over the last few years….and the holes have been starting to show. But in a way that only God can do, He finds a way to breathe new life back into an old sponge that was only good to be cast aside.
T-I-M-E. Kids spell love that way. So do we. Right now God has provided a way to love me through time….time away in a different environment. That alone is a blessing. But that ‘environment’ – that location on the map – ‘just so happens’ to be a place where I have friends.
I took private Spanish lessons for 1-1/2 years from someone in the town where I live. Her husband is in the Army & got transferred last year to Florida. I haven’t seen them in a year. Until tonight. I have a new job and ‘gee’ – the training is in Florida – an hour from where they live. So for a few hours tonight I was ‘home away from home’ – visiting with dear friends, catching up, eating fresh grilled salmon & fried plantanes…..playing Scrabble Slab….and just having fun.
And God poured another cup of water on the sponge and filled a few of the holes.
Another cup comes tomorrow when friends from the other direction (again, an hour away) come over. I haven’t seen them in almost 10 years! A bucket of water gets dumped tomorrow.
Slowly the lungs take in a deeper breath, the blood vessels fill with life-giving, life-pumping, life-affirming blood, which makes its way thru the body into the brain and back to the heart….and the heart fills a bit more….with love. Like drinking deep from a fountain, this is a peaceful time of refreshing for a world-weary soul.