What happens when a LANGUISHING heart taps into LAVISH love?

Last night, I read the word “languishing” in an article written in the New York Times.  This morning, I read the same word – “languishing” - in the book of Psalms in the Bible.  When a word I haven’t heard before or in a long time is suddenly repeated around me, I sit up and take notice.  I believe it’s God giving me a cosmic tap on the shoulder and I’ve learned to pay attention. 

Languishing means to be weak, to droop, to be exhausted, to feel forlorn or depleted.  It’s how many of us are feeling right now as we trudge slump-shouldered into our second year of Covid lockdowns and isolations.   We feel stuck, cut off from the life we want to be living.  Our days have lost their lustre.

“Hey mom!  What are we doing tomorrow?” my kids will query night after night.

“Same as we did today, guys…” I drone wearily night after night.

Adam Grant’s article [1] nailed that feeling I feel; Yup, I’m languishing.  How about you?

If I were an electronic device, I’d plug myself in and charge up my batteries.  If I were a gas tank, I’d glug gas into me real quick.  If I was a cluster of drooping yellow tulips, I’d scream for water. 

It’s quite obvious that I am in need of a fill-up, a charge-up, a replenishing.  But batteries, gas, and water won’t suffice.  So where on earth should I turn?  Where on earth can I go?  Where on earth is the answer?

There are many distractions on this earth that may give us some energy, lift, and thrust but are they enough to let us fly?  To truly grant flourishing and prosperity at a heart and soul level?

Nope.  Though the distractions of good food, great company, a solid education, engrossing entertainment, sensual sex, happy holidays, amazing art and literature will hold and fill us up for a time; they are all finite.  They end or run out and cannot sustain us through the whole season of our complicated, messy, constantly-changing, roller-coaster life. 

Which is why I am suggesting we plug our languishing hearts into the lavish abundance of God’s love.  His love is profuse, extravagant, sumptuously rich, unreasonable, and endless.  It never runs out and when we fill-up with His love, our cup runs over.   That means we will have more, more than enough. 

God’s love can hold and fill us up for all time.  And it fills us with this strength-inducing thing called HOPE. 

Not so much a hope that our circumstances will change; not so much a hope that covid will end and we can collectively rip off our masks and hug and congregate once again; but, rather, a deeper and longer-lasting HOPE that no matter what happens, we are loved and looked after.  A HOPE that even if Covid goes on for forty more years, God has a purpose and a plan for all this and for every single one of us.  For me and for you.   A hope that God will see us through this time. 

And I get it, hope might feel risky right now.  Many of us have had our hopes dashed over and over again over the past year.  Hope for that surgery that was planned.  Dashed.  Hope for covid to be over.  Dashed.  Hope for this birthday to be celebrated with friends.  Dashed.  Hope to sit bedside in the hospital with our loved one.  Dashed.

Hope might feel risky right now because we’ve been anchoring it into the slipperiness of circumstances.  What we need is a firm and secure holding place to grow our hope from.  What we need is the rock-like solidity that is God and his beautiful, glorious, lavish love. 

My friends, let’s tentatively tip-toe our languishing hearts and drooping shoulders into the lavish abundance of God’s love.   Let’s plug in here and wait for the fill-up of HOPE to happen.   It may take a while to charge up, fill-up and renew your strength so just keep plugged in and wait for it.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.

And, even if covid continues, let the HOPE growing out of God’s love allow you to flourish today.

“Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.  My soul also is greatly troubled.  But you, O LORD - how long?”  Psalm 6:2,3

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.”  1 John 1: 3a

“I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heart my cry.  He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.  He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.”  Psalm 40: 1-3

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