Filled To the Brim: Day 9
“and you shall be watered like a garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail” Isaiah 58:11
Watered – Clearly Isaiah was mistaken. How could he have used the word raweh for “watered”? After all, the root of this word is rawa, a word that means, “to be satiated, to have one’s fill”. Isaiah must have been wrong. Could God really mean that He will provide us so much that we will be satiated? Not just sprinkled but really completely satisfied?
When you compare this verse with the contemporary Christian outlook on life, you soon discover that very few practicing “Christians” really believe it to be true. Oh, we all hope that some day God will fulfill all our desires, but the truth is that we really don’t think that He will. We don’t expect it to happen. That’s why we are so prone to pick up the shovel and do it ourselves. We are a lot more like Sarah than we want to admit. God says, “I will provide all that you could ever need” and we laugh silently to ourselves. “Sure, God. When I get to heaven. But in the meanwhile, I’ve got to do it myself, right? Somebody’s still got to pay the bills, go to work, cut the lawn.” We are Sarah. We can’t see beyond our own human abilities. Too old to get pregnant. Too smart to fall for God’s promise. We all deserve to have children named “Laughter” so that we are reminded every day that we didn’t believe.
Why are we so foolish? If God says He will satiate us, why do we rush off to take care of ourselves? The answer is found in the previous eight days. We don’t believe because we are filled with the sin of ego. We don’t believe because we really want it to go our way in our time by our choice. We want control. Underneath all of the misery of not being “watered” is the desire to be in charge of the garden. And God does not water some else’s weed patch.
The first step toward rawa is letting go of all control. Trust the Gardner. Sarah’s mistake was to ignore the speaker, not the words spoken. In this garden, I must first be content with being just a planted flower, waiting for the Gardner.
I want to be satiated, not by my own agenda but by His. I want to know what it is like to be filled to the brim with God’s provision. Not the provisions that I have on my current “Christmas” list, but the real needs of my soul. Trust. Faithfulness. Purity. Mercy. Compassion. Gifts wrapped in blood, tied with the ribbon that says, “It is finished”. Is that the Christmas present you want?
