Overwhelm Me

Dear One,

It was the July 4th weekend and Hubby & I were overwhelmed. 

For my June birthday I asked him if we could update our (mostly my) home office space. Being the lovely human being he is, he said yes. Surely we could knock this project out over the 3-day weekend, right🙄?

Part of the project was new flooring. Which meant ripping out the (very) old carpet. Which meant taking everything out of the office.

Did I mention how full this little space was?

Bookshelves burgeoning with the bounty of my book buying binges😉 filled one whole wall. In addition to this were a big, heavy, rather cluttered desk, an upholstered chair I inherited from my Grandma, filing cabinets, piles of papers that never made it to said cabinets, a printer, desktop computer, lamps, candles, and the list went on.

All the aforementioned went from filling our office to filling our hallway, our living room, our dining and our guest room. And that, my friend, was a problem.

It was a problem because it was Monday, and ten people were coming for dinner on Wednesday. And yet more guests (strangers to us) were due to arrive over the weekend to stay for a week. We needed our living spaces back. 

We were overwhelmed.

I plopped down in God’s presence early the next morning and prayed. God reminded me of daily bread, of His open-handed posture, of Her abundant resources. I heard myself say in response:

You are the Sower,
You have the seed,
You have exactly what we need.

I was struck by 2 Corinthians 9:8 (Passion). In this passage Paul wrote about sowing seed, about generosity (both ours and God’s) and about being overwhelmed. He said:

“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything —every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”

Oh my. Here was a chance to move from being overwhelmed by the needs (mine and those of the people around me) to being overwhelmed by the seeds (the provision, the supply given by God).

To overwhelm is to inundate. To load or heap with an overpowering excessive amount of anything. I knew what it felt like in the negative sense, but how about being overwhelmed by “every form of grace”? This, I wanted to try!

I immediately pictured the disciple Peter inundated by the surprising grace of 153 fish in his net. 

Grace, in the above passage, speaks to God being the author and giver of benefits of every kind. I figure Peter’s fish fit that category. It is God leaning toward us to share (which I imagine him doing with a big ole grin). And it says God is more than ready to do so! More than ready to overwhelm us.

God is the sower. God has the seed. God has exactly what we need.

“More than enough of everything.”

Overwhelm Me: Our Little Life Words of the week.

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DEEPER DIVE

Ponder: 

• What is currently overwhelming you?
• Recall a time you were overwhelmed by an act of grace or goodness.

Practice:

• Be like God and inundate someone with grace and goodness this week!

Play: 

• Our song of the week is: Shall Not Want by Elevation Worship, to which I’ve had numerous private kitchen dance parties😉 💃.

Pray:

• Overwhelm me God, with your grace, with your goodness, with your great, great love.