Empty or full?

Sometimes I feel empty. How could I possibly sit here and write something moving? How could I hope to teach what I don’t know? The questions just keep piling up until I feel like I have nothing, like I am nothing.

But then I remember one of my favorite poems (I will admit that I have a great many). It’s called “A Better Resurrection” and it was written by a Victorian woman named Christina Rossetti.

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perished thing,

Melt and remold it, till it be

A royal cup for Him my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

We will feel empty. We will feel “dimmed with grief.” We live in a fallen world. But we also have the greatest gift we could possibly be given: the love of God and the promise of his mercy and healing.