But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart …
— MATTHEW 15:18
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee?
“Because someone bumped into me!!!?” Wrong answer.
You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea.
Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which will happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It’s easy to fake it, until you get rattled.
So we have to ask ourselves, ”What’s in my cup?”
When life gets tough, what spills over? Joy, gratefulness, peace, and humility? Or anger, bitterness, harsh words, and reactions? Life provides the cup. You choose how to fill it.
Think and Pray
Today, let’s work toward filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation, kindness, gentleness, and love for others.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, that my response in times of stress and distress would be kind, gracious, and helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it would benefit those who hear.
Robert Williamson shared this devotional with his CBMC team that meets on Wednesday mornings. Robert worked 25 years with the US Postal service before ‘retiring’ in 2012 to join his wife Sherri in founding Central Oklahoma Hose, a hose, fitting, safety, and industrial supply distributor based in Oklahoma City. When he’s not at work or meeting with his weekly CBMC team, he is most likely bass fishing or enjoying his 5 grandchildren.
