Empty

From the size and shape of the shimmery blue bottle, you might expect it holds perfume. Upon removing the stopper, you would find the bottle empty. You might be disappointed, but the Bible tells us of times when emptiness is a good thing.

In fact, it describes in Mark 14:3-9, a perfume jar being emptied as an act of love. A woman approached Jesus while he reclined at the table of Simon the Leper. She broke the alabaster jar and poured out expensive nard perfume on the head of Jesus. The other diners rebuked her for what they perceived as a wasteful act, but Jesus said she had done a beautiful thing and was preparing his body for burial. This demonstration of love occurred during the week leading up to his crucifixion, the Passion Week upon which we are currently focused.
Another empty item of that week was the tomb, the evidence of his resurrection. Without an empty tomb, we would have no hope of eternal life.
And the empty tomb could only come about because Jesus “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death.” (Philippians 2:6-8)
While we cannot fully comprehend what the Greek term kenosis (the emptying of himself, the making of himself nothing) means, we do know that it was a voluntary obedience to the Father’s will and plan. Jesus had to be born as a human being and die to bring salvation to mankind.

We also must be obedient to the will of our Heavenly Father, willing to give up what interferes with that plan.

 

Lift Your Empty Hands to Me

One by one he took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
And I walked earth’s highway grieving,
In my rags and poverty,
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to me.”

So I turned my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more,
Then at last I comprehended,
With my stupored mind and dull,
That God could not pour His riches
Into hands already full.

Martha Snell Nicholson
Letting go, no longer grasping to our idea of what is best, results in empty hands that God can fill with what He deems best.