Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Is the glass half full, or half empty? It depends on whether you're pouring, or drinking. ~Bill Cosby

I am sure you have been asked this question. If you respond that the glass is half-full, you are a positive thinker. If you respond it is half-empty, you are a negative thinker...or some would prefer saying it is simply a half glass of water because they are more realistic thinkers.

I considered myself a realistic thinker although I have been described by others as a glass-is-half-empty type, but what I think now is far less simplistic. You see, it is my nature to make things more complicated than that, to skew one's perspective to think outside the box...or glass as it were: Sometime ago now, I came to the conclusion that the glass is always full! God created some things before He created the earth: space, time, light/energy, and matter. The glass has space and space is usually filled with some kind of matter. Now, it may only be filled half-way with water, but the other half is filled with air, that stuff we breathe well enough but tends to elude the senses of seeing, feeling, tasting, touching, or smelling; even so we cannot live but a few minutes without air—it is actually more important than water. So, I say the glass is always full, but it just may not be full of what one wants it to be.

Now let's look at the glass from an entirely different angle. Let's view the glass as a container of life as air and water are essential to life, but let's look at it from a more spiritual perspective. The glass could be my life or your life, and God is the One looking at it. Does He see it as half a glass of life or always full but just not filled with what He would like it to be?

That is how life is. We fill it up with things. They may not be the things that please God, but we like keeping it full...full of things. Some of those things may make us feel partially empty because we have not filled it with the life supporting things we should or we do not recognize them as having purpose at the time as with air, but even the emptiness within us is filled, just not with what God would like to have there.

I have been clearing out some things in our lives here, emptying areas of our lives and our home to fill them with what really should be here. When my husband was in the U.K., I cleaned up the workout space in our garage so we can exercise and the homeschool/office area in our basement so that we can used it more efficiently. I am going to again tackle cleaning out the art/craft room in the basement and be brutal about what will be kept or not, because I need the space. It is filled with the things I really do not desire and I have this desire to fill it with doing my own artwork again. The Princess needs that influence in her life as well; she draws nearly every day. She is turning ten years old at the end of the month and I am realizing that she has much to develop and learn in the next six to eight years before she finishes our homeschool. I am hoping that she will learn how to be filled up with the things that are pleasing to God.

~ My Lord, fill our emptiness with Your Life and not just fill it but let it run over. ~