Spirituality

Even though it is tough to have our seminars on Tuesday since that day is filled with classes we had a good one today. It was on Spirituality. It gets to our spirituality being like a reservoir rather than a canal. Water that flows into a canal flows right out. Water only flows out of a reservoir if the reservoir is full. Our job/duty is to keep our reservoir filled with water so we have water to give to others.


When I came here I realized that many of the things that fill my reservoir are gone. My spiritual mentor, a spiritual advisor that I regard highly, several good friends that have the same type of spiritual thinking that I do, my time driving (I am one of those people that often drive with the radio off so that I can listen to God), my family, and my worship with a congregation that I consider more family than fellow parishioners. All of these are gone from my life right now. These things are how I kept my reservoir full.

What I also didn’t realize is that there are things here that have taken some over as reservoir filling. Since I have not built any deep relationships yet, the one filling me the most right now is daily chapel. I am building relationships with people that are like minded; I am in an incredibly nurturing environment, and I still have my contemporary Christian music that I listen to (they have a good station here, WMHK 89.7 you should try it……no just kidding). None of these things came to me consciously as a place for me to get my spirituality refilled. I guess you go into the wilderness (remember change), and you find things that fill you spiritually. As we learned in Pastoral Care, God ALWAYS finds us in the wilderness!  Every time I go someplace else I will have to go through the same thing. After this I will at least realize that I have lost my spiritual fulfillment and I need to find new places to get filled up.

Right now my reservoir is maybe 2/3-3/4 full. I am being careful to not over commit myself to things because I know that the classes will get more and more overwhelming as we get closer to the end. They are starting to become more overwhelming mostly due to not knowing what to expect from each professor for tests or for expectations of papers. We also have two classes that are fact intensive. History of Christianity and Intro to Bible. You could fill archives with the facts in these classes, (I know, they do fill archives with these facts :) ). Which ones will we need to know, because there is no way to know all of them. There are also many other things that get scheduled to fill our days even if we are light on classes. I find solace in knowing that God did not bring me here to fail. 

I will continue to keep to the things that I have found to fill my reservoir and look for others. As relationships develop I never know which one will become spiritually fulfilling. I hope you have places to get your spiritual reservoir filled. If not, please pray about that and ask God to help you see where you can get your spiritual fulfillment. It is a long and lonely day without it. Don’t walk alone when you don’t have to, I don't.

The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV