Examples from Everyday Life

I eat a lot of oatmeal. Since I eat a lot, I buy it at Costco and get the mongo sized box of it. The bad part of that, is that the oatmeal comes in bags. Not real great for storing purposes. To remedy that problem, I purchased a container at the dollar store in which to store my oatmeal. It works pretty good.

I have learned, though, that to truly use this container, I have to be a little aggressive with my oatmeal. When I just pour the oatmeal in there loosely, I probably only get about half to two thirds of the bag of oatmeal in the container. The first time this happened, I was a tad disgusted. Who wants a partial opened bag of oatmeal in the cupboard? It is like a disaster lying in wait. So, I began to pack the oatmeal down. I got in there and just packed, packed, packed. To my amazement, I was able to finally get the entire bag into the container. Cool.

Last night, I was refilling the oatmeal container. As I was packing the oatmeal, I thought of Luke 6:38: "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap." I had the perfect example of what a measure, pressed down, looked like. When I pressed down the oatmeal, I got almost twice the amount of oatmeal in my container.

Isn't that just like our God? Extravagant. Pressed down...so that more can get in there. Shaken together....no air pockets. Running over. Overflowing. I needed that picture last night. I'm pretty sure that I don't need to say any thing more about it.

Jesus said it best....first.