A Taste For Travel

us map

Looking for sneak peeks at America’s tourist destinations?

Check out my tablet: Sights, Bites, and Delights at tastetablet.com

I will be sharing tidbits of my travels each week. My journeying now includes 45 of the states. I hope to hit three more this summer. My goal of visiting all 50 is in sight!

What about you? Have you toured our entire nation? What has been your favorite travel destination? I would love to hear your experiences and compare notes.

Fill ‘er up, God!

I’m not a coffee drinker. Never have been. My taste buds don’t crave that bean. They prefer the sweeter cocoa variety. With an overarching saccharine inclination, my beverage choices lean toward hot chocolate, sweet tea, fruit juices, and, when I want to get really crazy, Mountain Dew.

As tasty as these treats are, at the end of the day, they are not what I prefer fill my cup.

Reading one recent morning (glass of orange juice in hand,) I encountered the following words, and was given a fresh vision of what “my cup runneth over” truly looks like.

“that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

This statement, part of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, created for me a vivid picture of God’s love. These words are the last of a sentence that begins:

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—

that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

I imagined what it would look like to be filled to the measure. Completely full. Overflowing. A cup running over.

overflowing-cup

Me, the chalice, overflowing with God. A constant stream of His love filling me up and spilling over the sides. Other things try to get in – the murky liquids of anxiety, despair, insecurity, lies – but there’s simply no room.

The flow from God is so strong, streaming over the sides of my cup, a constant river of His love, glory, hope, and peace, that it shoves everything else out in the abundance of its flow.

This  is the fullness my soul longs for. My prayer, like Paul’s for the Ephesians, is to fully grasp the love of the Lord, and be filled with it, to the measure, so that my cup runneth over with it each and every day.

Fill me up, Lord!

 

What fills your cup?

Good Enough? Part 2

(Click here for Part 1.)

Hello. My name is Kerry, and I’m a perfectionist.

What does this mean? I don’t want to be seen as less than perfect. What’s the bad news? I’m so far from perfect I can’t see it with a telescope. What the good news? Let me rephrase. What’s the great news? The amazingly spectacular awesome life-changing news?

God sees me as perfect.

Imperfect me. All my flaws. All my sin. Through faith in a Savior who died in my place, I am seen by my God as spotless and new.

That’s the good news. That’s the Gospel.

What does that mean? Well, besides making it possible to have a personal relationship with an otherwise unreachable HOLY God, AND eternal life in Him, this means I can find rest from my perfectionism. (And so can you.)

The striving can be so tiring. The constant desire to do everything just right. The insatiable hunger to be better. The worries. The fear of failure. It’s a constant battle to prove  – what, exactly? That we are worthy. That we are better than we actually are. That we are better than others. That we can do what we say we can do. That we aren’t a disappointment, to ourselves or others. That we are good enough. That others can accept us. That God can accept us.

So, have we proven it? Are we worthy? More bad news here. We aren’t. We will never attain perfection. Yes, more good news also follows. Christ is worthy, and He has made it possible for me, an unworthy sinner, to be forgiven, freed, in fellowship with God.

For the strivers like me out there, this should bring rest. Not power-nap rest, or 8-hour rest, or deep-tissue massage rest. True rest. Our strivings are stilled. Our hearts are at peace. We come to a full stop, knowing there is nothing else we should or can do. He has done it already. Just accept the gift.

Listening to the testimony of a woman getting baptized at my church, I was immensely blessed by her wording of this truth. She spoke of struggles similar to mine, and concluded with what God revealed to her:

“You don’t have to. I AM.”

Praise the Lord! He is everything. He has done it all. It is finished.

I can stop fighting a fight that’s already been won.

So, am I good enough?

To this, I can confidently say:

Christ is enough for me.