Broken Cisterns

My mom got new furniture last week. My dream furniture....beautiful brown leather. I won't even let my kids sit on it. I was so jealous, completely forgetting that my mom is twenty years older than me and she had hand-me-down furniture until I was in high school. And it had a brown and orange floral print...and it was itchy. But since I forgot all that I decided that I need new furniture...now. Problem, I can't afford new furniture. So I spent all day Saturday scheming up a way to start a business (since having kids at home doesn't allow me to work at a "normal" job) and make lots of money.

Result: I totally ruined the day with my husband and my kids. I paid no attention to any of them because I was creating a way to make my dreams come true. And then I cried when I went to bed and realized that I had "lost" a day and gained nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Why do I do that? Why do I think that the next thing will make me happy? That if I could just have that one thing everything would be great? "If only my life was like hers...." "If only I could figure out a way to take that exotic vacation I have to have...."

Rivers of discontent running through my mind. Plans to create a world that will provide me what I just know I'm lacking. My soul looking for water to satisfy and if I could just find the right balance, the right rhythm, the right job, the right whatever...then I wouldn't be thirsty anymore.

Then this:
"...for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water."
Jeremiah 2: 13

I'm scurrying to collect water for myself, it satisfies for a moment and then it's gone and I'm on the search again for more water. Meanwhile there's a fountain right there. And not a nasty, germ covered public fountain. A fountain of living waters. My soul trembles at the thought and it's right there.

So why do I focus on my broken jar?

I think it's because I love my (supposed) happiness more than Him. I forget that He is what I am created for. He is the source of more than happiness, of joy itself!

How? That seems so ethereal, impractical when my kids are sick again, there's more laundry on the floor, more bills to pay and another meal to make. How do I bathe in and drink in the "fountain of living waters" when I'm practically drowning in life? How do I put down my cistern?

"...the only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one.... We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our hearts the love of God - and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than building ourselves up on our most holy faith." (The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, Thomas Chalmers)

I can only give up my love for the world by replacing it with a more powerful love, the love found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it is replaced by hearing and seeing the Gospel over and over and over again.

So today, let's drop our cisterns and run...no sprint...to the fountain! I will meet you there and we'll relish in the Good News and drink together!

"Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.'" John 4: 13-14