Day Three

Day Three // February 28 // Emptiness

“Once I knew only darkness and stillness; my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.” – Helen Keller –

Once we fail to eat fully of the fruit of love with God and each other, we are left with the rotten fruit of emptiness. If love brings a feeling of connectedness and well-being, the rotten fruit of emptiness brings loneliness, hopelessness and self-absorption.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the great American poet and Harvard professor, was still grieving over his wife three years after she died. He couldn’t seem to move ahead in his life, but one particular day changed all that. Longfellow realized that his life was slipping by without really living it. He was stuck in emptiness. He realized that he needed to embrace love and begin to live again.

This revelation inspired Longfellow to sit down and write a poem, which he titled, “A Psalm of Life.” These words are a call to battle emptiness. The first two stanzas read:

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returneth, Was not spoken of the soul.” Lent reminds us that we all have times when we stand before God with an empty cup. But in those moments, we need to remember that only an empty cup can be filled. We have to be honest about our emptiness. We must also recognize that we can’t fill the cup on our own. How many lives have been lost chasing happiness and not joy, endless activity and not peace? Theologian Paul Tillich wrote that three fears have gripped humanity. Before the Christian era, it was the fear of death. During the Middle Ages, it was the fear of guilt. Today, Tillich said, it is the fear of meaninglessness. The abiding question of our age, then, is this: How do we fill our empty cups? We need to take full advantage of the fruit of love. Embracing the love Jesus has for us is not some abstract ideal; it is a way of battling emptiness – and it is the only lasting way. Jesus said, “Come to me,

all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Literally, it was to fill emptiness and meaninglessness that Christ came into the world. We need to eat frequently of the fruit of His love. We need to surround ourselves with reminders of that love. We can travel the globe trying to fill our cups; but until we fill our lives with Jesus, we will never be satisfied.