Paperweights and Power

It is about time that I starting blogging again!!! It has been way too long! To start off with I'll post an entry that I wrote down from April 21, 2011.

I was musing to myself that since the power is down right now that there isn’t a whole lot of work that I can do at the moment. I have a lot of work to get caught up on prepping volunteers to come, but without electricity there is no Internet and therefor I can’t communicate with them. I decided I would make some food, but it still requires electricity to cook it so then I figured that I might as well start doing our laundry and washing our dishes that have piled up in our sink (ie bathtub). I went over, turned on the water faucet and only a couple drops of water sputtered out. For a brief second I’d forgotten that when the electricity goes out we no longer have running water in the hospital, so all my plans at being productive have been foiled again.  Everything I need to accomplish has been thwarted all because there is no electricity. I feel essentially handicapped.

As I have been sitting here contemplating what to do next I decided to take the forced calmness of the day to spend some time in Bible study. That is when it hit me, or I should say that God used the opportunity to get a point across to me. Which is, without being connected to God’s power there really isn’t a whole lot I can do either. I have heard this before growing up and thought I understood the concept, but this time I feel like the point connected and had more force and application. Without God’s power I am a blank computer screen that can’t connect to the Internet, a water faucet without water, my light won’t turn on and I am blank. I need the constant flow of His “electrical power” in my life in order to function and in order to be useful. Without him I am empty and meaningless. Without Him I am handicapped and all my efforts to do anything become thwarted.

Just as a computer becomes pointless without power, so when I am disconnected from God I loose my whole purpose for existence. Essentially I become a powerless computer that has simply turned into a large paperweight sitting on the desk, looking nice and fancy and being perceived as important, but not anywhere near being used in the capacity it was created for. Just as teams of computer engineers have spent numerous hours creating, designing, and programing a machine to do a variety of amazing functions, God has created each one of us for something remarkable; but if the computer (or us) is never plugged into the power source it has very limited use. I can’t imagine how sad—no, heartbroken—God must be when He, the creator of our intricate parts and pieces, looks down at His masterpiece and sees that all we have chosen to be is a paperweight when He knows that he has made us to be something grand if we were just plugged into Him—the only true power source.

So it is up to me to choose if I want to be a mere paperweight or a functioning work of art. Oh how I long to be living in the way God intended! I want to be so much more than a pretty piece of machinery that only looks nice on the outside but that is actually dead on the inside. I want to work and be used for the purpose God made me for—whatever it might be!

-Amy