Your Life - Faith & Values

Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

For your inflation: He will fill you up

I’ve been travelling from here to yonder lately. I’ve seen my share of the ol’ blow-up mattress for sure. Years ago that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t even sure what one of those things were. So, when I first ran across one of those new-fangled things this was my story.

When I went to visit my oldest daughter, and she said that we would have to blow up the mattress that I would be sleeping on, I immediately felt light headed and inadequate for the task. Sounding as deflated as I felt, my “I can’t” was met with, “Mooommmm, you don’t have to blow it up, I have a machine that will do the trick.”

I learned a lot from that mattress and that machine. We laid the compressed piece of velour topped, heavy gauged PVC material on the floor. Just eyeballing the piece of rubber made my back ache. The thought of spending a night on that jewel did nothing to inspire sweet dreams. Could it be that my kids didn’t want an extended stay from Ol’ Mawmaw?

It was at this point that “the inflator” was introduced. My daughter, Melanie plugged the machine into the wall and there before my eyes that useless piece of material began to take shape. All of the sudden there was an incoming assault on our progress.

It came in the form of a somersaulting granddaughter. As she threw her little body on the mattress, all the air was displaced. When this moving missile of a little girl was banished to another room, we continued and the mass of plastic became what it was designed to be … a comfortable, soft mattress.

I don’t know about you, but there are bunches of days that I feel flattened and squashed. That’s about the time to start praying for a gust of Holy Ghost wind to revive us. We need that refreshing breath of God filling us up to be all He has created us to be. Trying to do it by ourselves will overwhelm you as much as the thoughts of blowing that mattress up on my own did me, but God says just plug into the power source of prayer and be filled to overflowing.

The stay with the kids was short but sweet and I didn’t need the chiropractor. When God cushions and fills your life with His Holy Spirit you can’t help but live up to the Designer’s plan for you. Go ahead, next time the air is sucked out of you, seek the source of life-giving breath and be filled.

And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7.)

Kandi Anderson, a free-lance writer and speaker, addresses topics of faith and values.