Playing In a Puddle?

I saw it while walking to our mailbox a couple of weeks ago. The rain from earlier in the day had created a puddle large puddle on the side of our road. In the middle of the puddle, standing about "knee" deep, was a seagull. It squawked at me as I walked past, as though I was invading its personal space.

I had to laugh at it. A lonely gull playing in shallow rainwater when an entire bay of freshwater - and the remnants of the hundreds of people who play around it - was only a few minute flight away. And yet here it was, not only settling for a puddle but defending it.

I wonder how often we are not unlike that seagull - missing out on something great that is out there for us because we're too busy defending the small thing we have. There are lots of reasons we might get caught in this trap. Maybe we could never imagine there is more out there - no one's ever invited us into anything more than we've known. Perhaps we've heard about it and we even long for it, but we're afraid to try to go after it because we might fail. Being frank, though, sometimes we're just too comfortable and too complacent to get up and go after the bigger and better thing that's out there.

I pray that you and I - and that we as a church - will have the courage to fly towards the greater thing God has for us. It may be that we get turned around on the way. Sometimes the travel might get difficult. But the Bible describes our God as "him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." If we believe that is true, let us allow our imagination to lead us. Let our confidence in him override any fear. And let us never, ever allow ourselves to become too comfortable and too complacent to miss out on all that God longs for us to be a part of!