When Jesus performed his first miracle at the wedding in Cana it states in the scripture that he instructed the servant to fill the jars to the brim. This captures my attention.
To the brim!
I like the sound of that!
It reminds me of living fully and with my eyes wide open.
When I think of this living life to the brim it conjures up for me images of joy, large family gatherings, celebrative music, parades, tables full of food, and so on.
But this is only half of life.
What about sorrow and sadness? Mourning over loss and saying good-bye for a time or permanently. This too can be a ‘to the brim’ experience. It’s what happens to our eyes during this time. They often fill to the brim with tears of anger and disappointment.
To deny ourselves the full feeling of loss is to only be half alive.
Life runs the gamut of extreme joy to extreme pain and everything in between. Sometimes these experiences collide in very close quarters.
Recently, a 6- year old friend of mine was reveling in a day with friends at a campground. She had been running and playing, roasting marshmallows and hotdogs, swimming and laughing, making crafts and relishing copious amounts of sugar. She was experiencing an independence that a 6 year old feels when allowed to run free in a safe space! Pure bliss!
Night was falling and her mother corralled this little filly, saying, “It’s time to go to bed.”
Oh, the sudden tragedy of being a little girl with basic needs who is cared for by her parents!
She wailed. She screamed. Her laments were heard by everyone on the campground.
If she’d had sackcloth and ashes they would have been employed.
I watched as she went from one ‘to the brim’ experience to another. She was living a full life.
She stomped her little foot and put her hands on her hips.
Glaring at her mother she yelled, “I hate this moment!”
Living life to the fullest - to the brim is embracing all of life. All of what comes. The really good days and the ones we’d rather not be in.
Sometimes a river is full and overflowing it’s edges and bursting into waterfalls. Sometimes that same river slows to a trickle and runs in constricted form. It is nevertheless the same river.
So how do we achieve ‘to the brim’ living?
My little friend has the clue.
It takes being present. In the moment.
Take us out of the moment and into the future (which to be honest is where many of us spend most of our time) and we are living scattered half lives of not really here and not quite there. We become divided and diminished.
Staying here - in the present moment is where fullness of life is.
It is not a coincidence that God is also present - in this moment. God is not the I was or the I will be, but the I am!
Being present to God and being present to oneself has a direct correlation with how full our lives are being lived. I want to live fully alive.