Seasons and Potlucks and RSVP’s: Article

Seasons and Potlucks and RSVP’s: Article

On my walk this morning, I reflected upon the scripture “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.¹” What has my heart been speaking lately? Yikes.

I was thinking about how we go through seasons. Not in the physical weather change of seasons, but rather, spiritual seasons. And how we react to our community while we are in those seasons.

Think about this: we’ve been invited to a potluck (at church or somewhere else in the community for example). If we are in a “spiritual summer” season, we may feel bright, and happy and feel that our resources are plentiful. So we reply with an exuberant “YES” and start planning to take the main dish that we will gather lots of ingredients for (and maybe even put those ingredients in a crockpot the morning of! And we feel giddy! Mission Accomplished.)

Or, maybe we are in a season of Winter. Emotionally barren. And we just automatically RSVP with “No.” And just call it a day. (And we don’t even look back.)

What if we are in a “spiritually Fall” season? Perhaps we aren’t totally excited about the invite. We are starting to look at all the stuff that we have to do, or that we need to prepare for, but we still have some summer energy left and we say yes. And figure we can pick up something at the local grocery store on the way.

How about a “spiritually Spring” season? Maybe we are still thawing from an emotionally hard winter season but we feel a ray of hope that maybe, just maybe, we might want to go to that potluck because we know that once we get there, we will have fun.

Can I get a witness? For me, the Winter season is at my back door and I am starting to feel some potential thawing of my legs. For example, in the past few Sundays at church, I’ve felt void during ministry time. I didn’t want to pray for people. And I didn’t want to receive prayer. Hence, I simply wanted to be left alone.

But then something happened. I saw someone go up for prayer. And I felt the Lord say “in your weakness, I am strong.” (Commence thawing). And I felt the instructions “go ask her if you can pray for her out of your weakness.”

So I did.

I was honest. I told her that I didn’t feel like I was in a place to pray for anyone, but I was responding to the Lord and could I “pray for you in my weakness?” And she said yes.

As a result, what happened next (aside from tears from both of us) was an honest prayer from both of us. I prayed for her. She was encouraged. And she prayed for me. And I was encouraged.

So, yes. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. If we are honest with ourselves and honest with God, he will show up. He will give strength when needed. And He will thaw our “spiritually Winter” season hearts– if we let Him. 🙂

¹ Luke 6:45

(From April. And actually written two months ago…just finally getting the nerve to publish)