desperate.

As the page has turned from one year to the next and I sit eagerly with my pen in hand and smooth out the clean, white, new piece of paper, ready to begin from the top I step back...hesitate...wanting to get it just right. Isn't that how you feel at the start of a new, fresh year?

It's Tuesday, January fourth of the new year Twenty Eleven. It's now that I want to begin scribbling away, filling up my new, clean page with ideas, accomplishments, responsibilities, to-do's, don'ts....all those resolutions that come along with the feeling of a fresh start. I love this quote (first read on another blog that I love to read) by Mary Oliver,

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" 

There are so many things I would like to do, would like to be. Changes I long to make, goals I want to meet. The Lord keeps bringing me back to something that was shared from the pulpit at church on Sunday. 

He is looking for empty cups that he can fill. 

Empty Cups....do I want to be an empty cup? There is nothing that sounds comfortable or satisfying in being an empty cup...but it is when I am empty, and not scurrying around trying to fill up my own cup, that I am desperate and ready to be filled by God. I want to be desperate. He wants me to be desperate. 

I want to be filled with his Spirit. I want to be filled with faith in his love, his grace, his sweet mercy. I want to know his whisper in my ear. I want to see the little ways he's working all around me...in my husband, my family, friends, church. I want eyes that see lost and hurting people like he does. 

I want more of Jesus this year, friends. I'm so glad that He is eager to fill an empty, desperate heart with his love, a truly satisfying love. 

Let's not keep ourselves so busy or be so consumed with our agendas that we aren't leaving room for him to fill us. Let's be eagerly expecting and longing for Christ to fill us this year!

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." Romans 15:13