Renewed

At the beginning of this month I went to my church’s summer camp. The theme was Renewal. I knew I needed that, but I was also working on the teen program which didn’t leave much personal time. However, I was optimistic that the teens would not take up too much of my energy—wrong! I arrived at camp tired and worn out, more spiritually than physically, and it seemed that there were those determined to make me feel even more that way. We got off to a rough start and I was asking God where was I going to find the strength to continue not only in teen leadership but in the other ministries I had agreed to take on in the fall. If I can’t handle this one thing, what was I going to do with more? I just felt like I had nothing more to give to the teens or anyone. I hated that feeling and I hated how it made me act towards others, but I didn’t know how to resolve it.

On Sunday evening we had a worship time in which God gave me a vision. Not a vision as in “the angel of the Lord appeared to me . . . “ but more of a metaphor for where I was (dry) and where God is.

I thought of wells. Each of us has our own well to drink from and to share with others. When you well gets low, the water gets muddy, so you find someone around you who is willing to share their clean water with you until the water level rises again in your own well.

I felt like that person whose well only had mud in the bottom. However, the other people who would normally give me a refreshing drink were low on water, too. I was getting possessive of what little water I had and was tired of the muddy water others offered me.

But then I realized that there was a well in the center of us all: God’s Well. God’s Well is always full of fresh water and always ready to share. In fact, you can take more than a cup of water to drink at God’s Well, you can bring buckets back to your empty well and fill it with fresh, clean water to replenish it.

Once you find God’s Well, you never have to worry about running out of water. You can share freely and drink freely and never have to drink muddy water again.

Since God has given me this vision of his unending and inexhaustible love, I have indeed felt renewed. When I feel at the end of myself, I close my eyes and imagine taking a long drink from God’s Well. I realize that nothing I do is on my own strength, skill, or talent—it’s all from God’s good gifts to me. I just need a long refreshing drink from God’s Well.

The Power of Cheese

Last week Chuck and I took a “Wine 101” class. It was a three hour class giving you an overview of wines and cheeses. The goal of the class was for you to figure out what kinds of wine you like and a little bit about what makes the flavors of wine. It also was set up for you to try some cheese pairings. I was all into the wine aspect, but the cheese . . . well I was not looking forward to that. I call myself a “cheese wimp” because anything beyond cheddar is pushing it for me. I will eat brie or swiss (only melted) but just about everything else is out of my league. I know so many people who enjoy cheeses and I never understood the wimpyness of my palette, so I decided to be brave and plan to try all the cheeses no matter what they brought out.

When the time came for the cheese plate to appear, all kinds of crumbly, hard, and mold-marbled slabs were placed before me. I thought this plate of enormous slices were to share, but noooo, they were all for me: Two goat cheeses, one sheep, one stinky and one blue. I was thinking of backing out. But I decided to hang in there. We started with the goat cheese (the “milder” ones) and worked our way to the blue. All night I stared at the blue cheese, telling myself that those dark veins were really spinach and not mold. I pretty-much suffered my way around the plate, however most of them were not as bad as I expected, though I still did not enjoy them. Then it came time for the blue cheese—the thing I had been dreading all night. Someone came around with slices of more blue cheese because most people had already eaten their first helping with relish. She got to me and she gave me this look of surprise when she saw my untouched triangle of moldy cheese. I said, “I think this will be enough,” and gulped. For my first bite I spread just a teeny tiny bit of blue cheese on my bread because my past experiences have not been very good. I took a bite and . . .I liked it. I really liked it. I even began eating forkfuls without bread. Now, I don’t know if it was the wine pared with the cheese, the really good quality cheese, the 13 wines I had beforehand, a new-found love for blue cheese, or heroine injected in the cheese itself, but I woke up the next morning craving it. Maybe my cheese wimp days are over.

© Michelle Scott 2005