All of Him. All of Us.

"The variety of cups are all still meant to help you drink."

THERE ARE A LOT OF CUPS in the cabinet. All sizes, all uses, porcelain, plastic, twenty-four-ounce, sixteen-ounce, eight-ounce. Decorative cups with delicate designs, coffee mugs which will wake. you. up. Antiques, given to me by my grandmother. Walmart specials which cost ninety-nine cents. Cups with handles. Cups made to help your grip. One which looks like a camera lens. And some actual glasses. I have to handwash those. How I ended up with so many cups in the cabinet is a long story, which will not fit on this page, but there’s one for every use and some which are un-usable. They’re too pretty. What has happened, though, is instead of using a different one at every meal for, say, the next three years, we tend to use the same ones. Instead of selecting from the glassware, one of us will use the plastic we got from some restaurant. The other will choose a smaller cup and continually refill it. On some special occasions, we may branch out, but usually not.

Enter a room and there are many people. Senior citizens, sullen teenagers, the toddler escapee with his mother trying to catch him. There are tall people, who have to duck through the doorway, people who barely come up to their chest. People of all cultures and backgrounds and habits. Some prefer chicken, fried, of course. Others would never eat it unless it is grilled. And there’s that one who only eats pizza, twenty-four-seven. One man is from New York City but has lived here for twenty years. Another grew up in Montana and occasionally misses the snow. There’s me, I’m from Florida, born and raised right here in Polk County. And to my left, a girl I knew in high school, and across from her a guy who sells insurance. People who hire housecleaners, and those who do the housecleaning themselves. A couple just barely married, still clinging to each other. How cute is that? Leave the room and go into the hallway and the dynamic changes, but the variety of cups are all still meant to help you drink.

We are made up of our experiences, but those are not meant to divide us. Christ’s church is His body. We are elbows and knees, fingers and toes. That one is the eye, left one only. That other is an ear, complete with an earring. I myself never had mine pierced. I do not look askance at you because yours are. Nor do I skip a sermon when the speaker is an apostle and not a prophet, nor skip the prophet for the evangelist. We all do have tastes. Maybe you like forty-four-ounce cups. Maybe you would never wear those blue jeans like that on a Sunday. But that person you just passed who smiled at you and you smiled back, just might be the cartilage that makes Jesus’ knee bend. And the woman you avoided because she talks too loud, might be best friends with the quiet girl because they know how to pray up a storm. Whether you are sixty-three, were born in Miami, and lived for thirteen years in Houston, fits right in with your brother-in-Christ’s upbringing in Kansas, his tendency to drive too slow, and buy things at a discount. For one reason—LOVE.

God’s body which is so different and made up of so many parts, functions perfectly because He is the Head of it, and the Holy Spirit is the breath, and love is the glue. When His lungs breathe in, His nose breathes out. When His fingers bend, His knuckles were involved in it. And the strides that He takes are us moving forward, and the pause that He makes is when we stoop to help someone who needs it. His compassion is ours. His patience, too. His voice that is speaking in a thousand tones sounds that way because so many are sent. He heals when we lay hands on the sick for Him. He raises someone up when we use our strength to lift.

He came to earth to go and do. He left earth giving us the commission to go and do. We are meant to be active but have instead chosen to sit, and in sitting, nothing is usable. Our vision is locked on the same scene, our hearing attuned to only what’s nearby. Boredom strikes us so we decide to nitpik. Suddenly, that person who fit right in becomes an outcast for a reason only the devil could come up with. And that other one cannot be saved in the condition he’s in. First, he must do these five things before he is accepted. No, God’s heaven is a cabinet full of cups of all ages, those from the Middle, those from Yesterday, and others that had little to no use at all because we tossed them up there when we were too busy. We’ve fine-tuned the gospel to fit on our plate, looking forward to Jesus’ second coming as our quick escape when He’s given us such a variety of vessels to fill and fill and fill again.

“Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:” (1 Corinthians 12:22 Remedy)

NOTE: I write these in the Spirit. Though I am a trained writer, when it comes to gospel truth, I must have the Holy Spirit to help me. I write nothing from an outline, nothing planned, but hear what He wishes me to write and then it “all comes out,” so to speak. When I reached the line: “AND OTHERS THAT HAD LITTLE TO NO USE AT ALL BECAUSE WE TOSSED THEM UP THERE WHEN WE WERE TOO BUSY,” the Savior spoke. I have honestly never had Him interrupt like that before, and I was overwhelmed for quite some time. Please, hear these words. Jesus died for everyone, but His heart breaks for the unborn children we have tossed away.

Photo by Vanesa Giaconi on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com