What happens when a LANGUISHING heart taps into LAVISH love?
Languishing means to be weak, to droop, to be exhausted, to
feel forlorn or depleted. It’s how many
of us are feeling right now as we trudge slump-shouldered into our second year
of Covid lockdowns and isolations. We feel stuck, cut off from the life we want
to be living. Our days have lost their
lustre.
“Hey mom! What are we
doing tomorrow?” my kids will query night after night.
“Same as we did today, guys…” I drone wearily night after
night.
Adam Grant’s article* nailed that feeling I feel; Yup, I’m
languishing. How about you?
If I were an electronic device, I’d plug myself in and
charge up my batteries. If I were a gas
tank, I’d glug gas into me real quick.
If I was a cluster of drooping yellow tulips, I’d scream for water.
It’s quite obvious that I am in need of a fill-up, a
charge-up, a replenishing. But batteries,
gas, and water won’t suffice. So where
on earth should I turn? Where on earth
can I go? Where on earth is the answer?
There are many distractions on this earth that may give us
some energy, lift, and thrust but are they enough to let us fly? To truly grant flourishing and prosperity at
a heart and soul level?
Nope. Though the
distractions of good food, great company, a solid education, engrossing entertainment,
sensual sex, happy holidays, amazing art and literature will hold and fill us up
for a time; they are all finite. They
end or run out and cannot sustain us through the whole season of our complicated,
messy, constantly-changing, roller-coaster life.
Which is why I am suggesting we plug our languishing hearts
into the lavish abundance of God’s love.
His love is profuse, extravagant, sumptuously rich, unreasonable, and endless. It never runs out and when we fill-up with
His love, our cup runs over. That means we will have more, more than
enough.
God’s love can hold and fill us up for all time. And it fills us with this strength-inducing
thing called HOPE.
Not so much a hope that our circumstances will change; not
so much a hope that covid will end and we can collectively rip off our masks and
hug and congregate once again; but, rather, a deeper and longer-lasting HOPE
that no matter what happens, we are loved and looked after. A HOPE that even if Covid goes on for forty
more years, God has a purpose and a plan for all this and for every single one
of us. For me and for you. A hope
that God will see us through this time.
And I get it, hope might feel risky right now. Many of us have had our hopes dashed over and
over again over the past year. Hope for
that surgery that was planned.
Dashed. Hope for covid to be
over. Dashed. Hope for this birthday to be celebrated with
friends. Dashed. Hope to sit bedside in the hospital with our
loved one. Dashed.
Hope might feel risky right now because we’ve been anchoring
it into the slipperiness of circumstances.
What we need is a firm and secure holding place to grow our hope
from. What we need is the rock-like
solidity that is God and his beautiful, glorious, lavish love.
My friends, let’s tentatively tip-toe our languishing hearts
and drooping shoulders into the lavish abundance of God’s love. Let’s
plug in here and wait for the fill-up of HOPE to happen. It may
take a while to charge up, fill-up and renew your strength so just keep plugged
in and wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.
Wait for it.
And, even if covid continues, let the HOPE growing out of God’s
love allow you to flourish today.
.
.
“Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal
me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O LORD - how long?”
Psalm 6:2,3
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that
we should be called children of God.”
1 John 1: 3a
“I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and
heart my cry. He drew me up from the pit
of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my
steps secure. He put a new song in my
mouth, a song of praise to our God.”
Psalm 40: 1-3
*New York Times article referred to: “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re
Feeling: It’s Called Languishing” by Adam Grant
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR1OeLi1YWzF_6LIKzGZqWtFRycrVNuMv2LoEviXF4P14Ywy9EZV-sNf15o
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