About a year and a half ago when I was starting a new job I was talking with a couple from church who had been praying that God would open a new door for me. As we were talking one of them said, “this image of a hummingbird just came to mind–you know how they move around and don’t stay in one place super long? I think God has been and is going to be moving you around to different places for different purposes.”
Naturally, in true God “fashion”, from that day on I have seen an inordinate number of hummingbirds in all kinds of places: the real kind, that frequently fly by where I work and live, even stopping a foot from my face to stare at me for a moment and fly away; tattoos; necklaces; art; t-shirts; etc. Whenever I see a hummingbird now I smile think of God and His good plans for me.
I have a mostly desk job and it is not uncommon for me to get up several times a day to walk outside and do a couple of laps around my building; just to get moving and get some fresh air. This afternoon as I was walking around on the bottom floor of the building under an overhang that has several emergency fire sprinklers, a hummingbird started flying overhead just ahead of me. It was flying from sprinkler to sprinkler trying to get something to drink from each sprinkler. It made me smile and also feel sorry for the bird. Was it getting a drop of water here and there or was it simply mistaking the sprinklers for a flower or feeder with nectar that could satisfy?
I started thinking about how I’ve been trying to get satisfied in a lot of ways lately that just leave me empty because they aren’t God. I’m thirsty spiritually and if I’m trying to suck a drop out of a dry sprinkler as opposed to God, who has the “true nectar” in abundance, the living water that will never run dry, then I am going to be very thirsty and unsatisfied for a long time. In John 4:13 Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well:
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
I also thought about this verse from Jeremiah 2:13:
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (NIV)
“My people have committed a compound sin: they’ve walked out on me, the fountain
Of fresh flowing waters, and then dug cisterns— cisterns that leak, cisterns that are no better than sieves.” (The Message)
I know that if I don’t spend enough time intentionally drinking in the living water of God–His presence and His word–I will go dry in a hurry. And with that comes frustration, emotional meltdowns, discouragement, and more. It’s a life or death situation really, spiritually speaking. If I want to be full of spiritual life, I need to fill myself with God. If I try to fill myself with anything else–good as some of those things may be in and of themselves–I will always be thirsty because only God’s living water can truly satisfy. And if I try to manufacture something on my own apart from God, the “cistern” I built will always be leaking.
What do you try to fill yourself with apart from God’s living water? I pray you will be encouraged to fill yourself with Jesus this week…and not run dry.
