What Do We Have to Offer?

When people drop by my home, I know I'm supposed to offer them something to drink, but man, I forget. Many times I've remembered only as they go home (maybe because I didn't offer them anything to drink?).

But when I meet people out in Real Life or here in Blogland, I am offering them (you) something without even realizing it. It's like I'm handing you a drink without consciously knowing I'm doing so.

It matters what we offer the people in our lives because no one arrives there by accident.

God gives us a river in which to paddle upstream, against the current, and along the way, it's as though, poof! There's someone next to us in a little boat who's tired of just floating downstream--someone who's ready to face the upstream direction. Someone who needs a towline to get them started--and a drink of water. Someone who needs what we have to offer.

But it's good to ask ourselves, "What do I have to offer?"

It shouldn't be what the weighted-down, Down Streamers offer--things like sadness, depression, complaining, confusion, discontent, irritability and a lack of inner peace and joy. 

Everyone already has plenty of that.

Yet sometimes I see many Up Streamers with boats full of Down Streamer stuff. Sometimes my own boat has grown heavy beneath that junk.

God has something better! Ways to lighten our load while we're paddling upstream. But it takes emptying our little boats of things we bought into at the Down Streamers Shops along the shore. Dark, heavy burdens which we bought because everyone else stuffed theirs into boats.

May I keep my own little ship, lightweight. It's easier to paddle upstream with a boat free from heavy junk and I must paddle upstream, against the current--that's the way to God's Place. 

It's upriver--just ahead. In the light.


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"Jesus said...I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10