...the something of nothing

Can having nothing really exist?

The fact that we are alive means we have life, therefore it is impossible to have nothing.

Yet often as I lose ‘things’ I feel like I am left with nothing. Nothingness is a void, a space previously filled with something. So nothing feels like a vacuum, like an airless container imploding and collapsing inwards.

But all of this sounds negative, self obsessed and completely not where I am at or coming from.

Biblically Jesus asked his disciples and many others mentioned throughout the Gospels to follow him after giving up all they had acquired in life. This was not only physical objects but relationships too. How hard is that? Some much of what we have and what we do defines who we are. So maybe that’s why Jesus required his disciples to give up everything. Maybe the Disciples needed to lose what & who they were to re-write who they would become? Throughout the Gospels we also know that the Disciples had trouble “getting it” and so Jesus needed them to be really focused – no distractions required.

The same is true for me. Without ‘things’ I am free, having nothing can be releasing but it does require humility. Whether I choose to free myself from the baggage of life or whether life frees me from my worldliness, it takes adjustment and a change of heart. And sometimes I struggle with that.

I’m at a place now where I can or maybe should give some ‘things’ up and in other ways life has taken ‘things’ from me. The only solution for me is to go to God empty handed but with a humble, open and expectant heart. Expectant that through life’s experiences and through whatever comes, the something shapes me into the person God requires.

God is focusing me…I have my blank canvas again and can fill it easily but will the marks I make be of God or man? All too often it is easy to fill the silence when a conversation goes quiet, or to fill an empty room with objects or to feel the need to complete every empty box on a form. But isn’t there something in the silence, the space, the nothingness?

I’m ending just as I started, because we have life, nothingness is impossible. Our God given being is ‘something’ but to remain God focused perhaps I need to be careful about the marks on my otherwise stripped back canvas and enjoy creating the something, that can never be nothing.