Nourish Your Soul: Life is Like a Lazy Susan

It’s Nourish Your Soul Day! 

(Mama Becky)

Rachel and I have decided to begin expanding our blog to include more than just recipes to nourish your bodies.   We want to share thoughts, things, quotes, ideas, and more that nourish our souls.  We come hungry each day for more than daily bread; we long for joy, peace, calm, wisdom, laughter, new ideas, interesting things, clarity, space and meaning.  In fact, this will be the name of our next book… Nourished. (Due out Jan. 2015, with Zondervan.)

Greg and I are in a particularly challenging time of letting go of things, communities, and people who have, for one reason or another, moved on or out of our lives for now. I believe we’re in transition — between trapezes if you will — coming out of one season and now being “swept clean” as we wait for a new arrival or two.  We do not know what or who God is bringing to our attention and our lives next, but we anticipate the coming, we’re readying our nests for whatever, or whoever it may be.  Just as the leaves have to fall from the trees to make room for fresh growth, we are being called to let go of tasks that are no longer ours, to make room for fresh sprouts, new leaves.  ‘”Behold, I am doing a new thing.”

As I pondered this, the following word picture came to mind, and has been a comfort.  Perhaps it might also comfort and nourish you, today.

I think life is a little like bunch of bowls on a Lazy Susan in the middle of a table.  God turns the Lazy Susan and our job is to focus on the bowl he’s put in front of us that day. The other bowls — the ones currently out of reach – are being tended to by others (on the other sides of God’s big table) and are not part of our particular “job” or “focus” for this day. Give us this day our daily bowl.  Tomorrow we wake to a new bowl. Each day God gives us our portion and our lot, our manna, our daily bread… our bowl. To reach beyond that, across the table, to bowls that aren’t meant to be in our frame of concerns, tends to make a big mess.

What bowl has God put in front of you today?  What few things are yours, and yours alone to tend to, just for the hours between now and sleep?  Can you trust Him to use others to tend to bowls that are, for today, out of your reach?  If so, serenity is yours.