Wouldn’t it be nice to be a cup?
Cups pass each day in their own little cupboard community quietly anticipating one thing… fulfilment! Day after day they long to be brought out of their dark world to be filled with whatever is on offer, coffee or tea or even the occasional hot chocolate.
But life as a cup has one fatal flaw… being filled never lasts, and without it the cups become nothing, a hollow shell with only stains to remind them of what they once were.
Christian counsellor Ed Welch observes that a lot of modern counselling treats people as empty cups waiting to be filled. Needs and longings become substances to be acquired; more self confidence, more love, more acceptance. Hell therefore becomes the feeling of emptiness when these things inevitably run dry. We feel worthless, frustrated, unappreciated, angry or bitter.
Worse still is what this view of our humanity does to God. In this scenario God is reduced to the role of a butler or vending machine who exists to give us our hearts desire and fill us up again and again.
What then is the alternative to life as a cup?
The Bible’s answer is to show was that we are not cups needing to be filled, but mirrors designed to reflect the glory of the God who created us and who is the source of unceasing goodness and joy.
Tragically, as a result of sin, we have smashed our mirrors and used the broken shards to reflect ourselves and the rest of creation. This, Paul tells us in Romans 1, is the problem with the human race; not that we are cups filled with negative emotions but that we are mirrors who have chosen to reflect everything but God.
The solution therefore is not to be filled but to be put back together and orientated towards God in order that we might image him to the world. This sanctification is the process by which God’s Holy Spirit works in us to make us more like Jesus Christ, the one who “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
As Welch so helpfully puts it, “Instead of a love cup…the image is more accurately that of Moses literally reflecting the glory of God… The centre of gravity in the universe is God and his holiness”
For more on this see, Ed Welch "Who are we?":
http://www.crosswaypa.org/_files/live/WhoAreWeNeeds.pdf
